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Upon ignition, a short period of smoke (about 1 second) was evident from the rear of the rocket as the motor came to pressure and it appears that some small amount of thrust was experienced to begin lifting the rocket. Before the rocket left the rail however, the payload section and nose cone were ejected from the booster.
After inspection, it appears that both the aft and forward closure were subjected to an over-pressurization. The aft closure appears to have been forced backward, forcing the motor retainer and motor mount adapter ring to buckle and ultimately tearing the end of the motor mount completely off. Meanwhile, the forward closure was completely ejected from the front of the casing and continued up through the airframe until impacting the aft bulkhead of the avionics bay. Inspection of the forward section of the motor case shows bulging where the forward closure was ejected. All the propellant grains were recovered with, it appears, considerably little propellant actually burned (after the payload ejection, the smoke completely stopped and the propellant did not continue to burn). The aft insulator and forward o-ring were recovered. The aft o-ring is presumably still inside the motor case with the nozzle (the aft assembly is not removable in its current condition). The forward seal disk and o-ring were not recovered despite a lengthy search around the launch site.
