Probe Into Tuesday’s Antares Explosion Begins As Questions Arise About The Rocket’s Engines

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
As day one of the investigation of the failure and explosion of an Orbital Science Corp.’s Antares rocket during an attempted resupply mission wrapped up Wednesday evening, reports surfaced that the company already had plans to retire the five-decade old engines used to power the launch vehicle.
In a statement, NASA said that members of the Wallops Incident Response Team had completed an initial assessment of the Virginia-based launch site, but noted that it would take several more weeks to fully analyze and understand the effects of the incident. They did report that a sounding rocket launcher adjacent to the Pad 0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport and buildings in the immediate area suffered the most severe damage.
The US space agency also said that a number of support buildings had suffered broken windows and imploded doors following the explosion of the Antares rocket and its Cygnus cargo craft shortly after 6:22pm EDT on Tuesday. Furthermore, the initial assessment revealed damage to the transporter erector launcher and lightning suppression rods, as well as debris around the pad. Environmental assessments were also being conducted at the site.
In a separate report, Orbital officials said that the preliminary assessment indicated “the major elements of the launch complex infrastructure, such as the pad and fuel tanks, avoided serious damage. However, until the facility is inspected in greater detail in the coming days, the full extent of necessary repairs or how long they will take to accomplish will not be known.”
“I want to praise the launch team, range safety, all of our emergency responders and those who provided mutual aid and support on a highly-professional response that ensured the safety of our most important resource – our people,” said Wallops director Bill Wrobel. “In the coming days and weeks ahead, we’ll continue to assess the damage on the island and begin the process of moving forward to restore our space launch capabilities.”
According to Charisse Jones of USA Today, Orbital CEO David Thompson told investors during a conference call that the probe into the incident, which also resulted in the loss of 1,600 pounds of research (including many experiments designed by students) and the Planetary Resources ARKYD 3 spacecraft, “may or may not” reach the conclusion that its two Soviet-era AJ-26 engines were the cause of the explosion.
However, he also said that the company had already been planning to replace them. The Antares rocket was powered by a pair of AJ-26 main engines, which were originally built in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and were later refurbished in the US by Aerojet Rocketdyne, Jones said. She added that the rockets have had issues during tests in the past, with one catching fire three years ago and another being lost completely on a test stand earlier this year.
“Under the original plan, we were as of now about two years away from conducting the first launch of an Antares with a second generation propulsion system, We are currently looking at the prospects for accelerating the introduction of that system,” Thompson reportedly said during the conference call. “I would anticipate that there will be some delay in the next scheduled Antares launch,” he added, saying that the delay could be as little as three months, or that it could be “considerably longer than that depending on what we find in the review.”
Frank Culbertson, the Orbital Sciences executive in charge of the NASA program, defended the engines during a Tuesday night press conference, according to Bloomberg’s Justin Bachman. He said that the AJ-26s had been “refurbished and Americanized,” calling them “robust and rugged” and noting that they had a successful track record. However, Bachman noted that Elon Musk, founder of Orbital’s rival SpaceX, had previously mocked the use of the engines.
“One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke,” Musk told Wired two years ago, according to Bloomberg. “It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s – I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.”
Thompson said that the Antares failure will not impact the company’s 2014 financial results. Orbital, which has a $1.9 billion contract to complete eight ISS resupply missions for NASA, will not suffer a “major financial hit” from the incident, as most of the revenue from its contract had already been paid and insurance should cover any difference, according to Bachman. However, its reputation among other clients may be another story, he added.
The incident could also have a broad impact on the space exploration industry, as Los Angeles Times reporter Melody Petersen said that analysts believe it could lead critics to question NASA’s decision to hire private-sector companies to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) starting in 2017. However, Eric Stallmer, the president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said that while he was certain that “questions will be raised,” he doubted that the explosion would in any way alter NASA’s plans of having Boeing and SpaceX develop vehicles for use on future manned ISS missions.
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