Antares Rocket Explodes, Destroys Cygnus Freighter
Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares rocket exploded shortly after liftoff from Wallops Island, Virginia. The explosion destroyed a Cygnus freighter carrying supplies and experiments to the International Space Station.
The explosion reportedly occurred about 6 seconds after launch. There was a massive explosion and then the vehicle fell back onto the launch pad. The Antares engines were throttled up to 108 percent when the explosion occurred.
The bottom of the Antares explodes right after liftoff.
Launch officials have confirmed there were no injuries in the explosion. All personnel are safe and accounted for at this time.
The cargo manifest includes 26 Planet Labs satellites that would be launched off the space station. Planetary Resources also had its first test satellite aboard Cygnus. Thee were also a number of student experiments on the ship. NASA has the full manifest.
A massive fireball occurred right after the Antares rocket hit the ground.
This mission was Orbital Sciences’ third contracted Cygnus cargo delivery flight to the International Space Station under an 8-flight contract. Two previous contracted Cygnus missions and a demonstration flight had succeeded.
This was the fifth flight of the Antares rocket. Four previous flights had been success.
Antares uses Arojet-Rocketdyne AJ-26 engines on its first stage. These are refurbished NK-33 engines originally designed for the Soviet manned lunar program in the 1970’s. There have been problems with corrosion on the 40-year old engines; one engine exploded on its test stand in May.
The rocket’s first-stage structure is built in Ukraine. Antares second stage consists of a solid-fuel rocket supplied by ATK.
My deepest sympathies to the Orbital Sciences team and all those with payloads aboard the vehicle. It’s a bad day, but these things happen in this field. This is the nature of this business.
UPDATE: Orbital and NASA officials will have a press conference at 9 p.m. EDT (6 p.m. PDT).
44 responses to “Antares Rocket Explodes, Destroys Cygnus Freighter”
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Well, I bet they will be looking real hard at the AJ26 engines and all of the data that was used to clear these engines after the mishap earlier this year.
Yes it looked very much like an engine failure and with an item failing in test as a warning sign hard questions need to be asked. At least with the crash site accessible they should be able to recover components to help determine the failure mode.
You can already see the first ‘wtf was that?’ on one of the engines right at T+0 i think. A hichup/small explosion?!? So much for using 40 year old Russian refurbs!
Also, SpaceX fanboi corps inc in 3… 2… 1… :X
Don’t be silly. This isn’t just going to hit Orbital S it gives certain congresscritters ammo against all new commercial efforts.
Pad damage? TE damage? 40 y/o Russian motors that have had failures on test stands twice, and how many were rejected? A couple days ago they said they’re re-starting the RD-180 kerfuffle with ULA with another anti-trust lawsuit possible. They need a solution a LOT faster than that.
The only thing I would expect from SpaceX is condolences from Elon. He knows that on ‘any given Sunday’ it could be him. He blew through three Falcon Ones to get where he is. One more, and we might not be talking about him at all…
Yes, there did appear to be a flare around about liftoff – perhaps from a fuel umbilical detaching, similar to an early F9 launch incident. Perhaps not, but it would be an interesting twist if it was a pad related cause rather than directly a rocket failure.
The flare is from pyro-bolts for detaching the hold downs. It is normal.
No after that as the camera angle moves back out and the rocket actually lifts off. It might just be the blast plume bouncing off the strongback…or not.
I thought they lost one of these engines on the test stand which caused this flight to be moved back while they looked at the engines on this flight.
Affirmative!
that was a prior flight was held back…
that was the July flight.
> It’s a bad day, but these things happen in this field. This is the nature of this business.
Unless it’s a failure-prone rocket produced by some literally collapsing company, right Doug?
SpaceX wanted all the CRS and now they have it. They may have to put a pressurized module in the trunk and lengthen the Trunk. Elon warned about using antique engines. Maybe they could use the Orbital modules. Several will be available and NASA has pre-paid for most of Orbital flights.
Good grief, it didn’t take long for someone to speculate that Space X would get all the CRS. Vultures.
Hence my comment earlier :/
No system is perfect and it is good to have a second rocket and capsule. I agree it would be good to fly either capsule on either rocket for better resilience but that is probably not practical.
Although SpaceX may benefit in the next round of cargo it is bad news for all private space to have such a spectacular failure to damage the image of the industry as a whole.
Hopefully Orbital bounces back and finishes out their contract (or the majority of it).
For one, if SpaceX has to stand down, then we can’t resupply the space station! We’d be back to totally reliant on the Russians until Europe and or Japan could restart their production lines (I believe both have finished out their cargo delivery programs) and/or the US companies could get going again.
For two, if a SpaceX has to stand down for any period of time now that Orbital will be out for a while, the whole commercial cargo program will be labeled by some a failure. If it takes years to get going again and we’re back to our international partners doing the cargo, it actually will have been a failure (esp. with the ISS likely winding down by 2024).
SpaceX designed brand new everything. No reusing Russian or american engines. Everything architected for volume production, low cost and safety. Its not by accident that SpaceX booster uses 9 engines, so it can survive the loss of an engine and still deliver its mission to the ISS.
Of course everyone is free to see the glass as half empty. But I see it as 90% full.
Its also important to realize that the current Falcon 9 iteration (F9R or V9 v1.1) has launched 8 times already and should be launching 12-15 times next year (including Falcon Heavy launches), along with the usage of 10 engines per F9 and 28 per FH resulting in far greater safety data sampling than Antares / Cygnus solution that was never really meant to be economical / powerful enough for lofting GEO birds or anything but supply to the ISS.
More Space X cheerleaders dancing on the ashes of Antares.
In a competitive market, that’s a good thing. Everyone knows SpaceX is the future and Orbital is a legacy dinosaur.
When companies fail sufficiently, they should go away and let someone else take their space who can do better. (I know, this is anathema to entrenched NASA types)
Orbital get’s paid more to deliver less and take nothing back, compared SpaceX.
So, these cheerleaders highlight the better strategy, engineering, economics, and execution of SpaceX.
Besides, if SpaceX has a failed launch every hater will come out of the woodwork and condemn them forever.
As opposed to the “old space” haters who have condemned and continue to condemn the legacy providers.
SpaceX had 3 failures in a row with their Falcon 1. They know bad things can happen to them. Orbital just lost an Antares. Boeing and Lockheed have had losses in the past as well, and not all ULA missions have been completely successful. Their failures just cost a lot more.
Old Space = Stagnant Space
The ones dancing, quietly, are Boeing and SNC. This accident will not impact spacex. At least not in a positive sense.
You said if SpaceX were to stand down. I’m explaining why the odds of SpaceX loosing a rocket is much smaller than Antares. No dancing on their ashes. I’m confident Antares will launch again. They have performed quite a few launches, so noone can call their rocket flawed in design. But SpaceX is leaps and bounds forward in safety, cost and overall cost efficiency.
maybe now we will build our own first stage, instead of russia building the tanks,lines and the engine for us.
Ukranians built the tanks. But the way things are going, they might be Russians REALLY SOON!
And USSR built those engines, not Russia. Probably goes a long way towards explaining this.
The
Russians are really good at rocket engines and it’s a safe bet that the
problem will be narrowed down to one of the engines and that the engine
problem was a result of the refurbishment and modification of the NK-33
and not the overall design.
I didn’t mean that there might be design issues, but simply that these specific engines are very old. The Russians might make good engines, but I doubt they had ‘storage in a warehouse for forty years’ in mind during the design process.
That was a concern that was brought up in a Washington Post story. Hence my comment that it might be a refurbishment/modification issue.
Hard to say if this was an engine failure or a range safety termination event?
Are they using Thrust Termination or Flight Termination? That wasn’t any kind of flight termination system I’ve seen before. I also didn’t hear anyone from Range Safety on the circuit.
True, I didn’t hear range safety either.
Now the officials are saying it was range safety. Whatever, those LSCs didn’t seem nearly as effective as the ground.
Looked a lot like an N-1 rocket failure.
IIRC, on the N-1, they kept saying that it was the feeds that failed.
I wonder, if perhaps, they had engine failures, and did not diagnose is correctly?
Just as the exhaust flared just after clearing the tower there was a flight systems nominal, not something you expect if they are terminating flight. In addition if it was a deliberate termination I would expect charges on the body to detonate to mix and ignite the fuel in the air and spread the structure to minimise damage on the ground. Not stop thrust and allow the intact body to hit the ground then explode.
Also I would expect an announcement that the flight was terminated like SpaceX stated when Grasshopper was terminated.
To me it looked like an engine problem evidenced by change in exhaust shape and colour then complete loss of loss of engine containment/explosion damaging second engine and cessation of upward movement. The resulting ground impact then caused the rocket body to fail and escaping fuel then burned very rapidly ie blew up on impact with ground not exploded in the air.
In the first seconds of the flight, range safety termination is usually disabled to allow the rocket to leave the launch pad and not to destroy it in case of mishap. It looks like a turbopump or engine failure. It’s too early to tell for sure of course.
Ba doom doom!
Kudos that NASA continued a live feed after the incident. One interesting aspect from a regulatory standpoint was who had jurisdiction. There was a question whether the FAA had jurisdiction over the site or the NTSB that had to be answered before Orbital personnel could start interviews. Ultimately, it was determined that NTSB has jurisdiction. I am pretty sure this is a first where the NTSB investigates a private rocket failure and is a good learning experience that sets a precedent for future incidents (yes, they will happen).
Spacex will NOT benefit from this. NASA will no doubt allow osc to finish this contract, but then NASA will likely no longer use osc for launches.
However, we MUST have multiple launch companies. As such, Boeing, possibly SNC, will be doing cargo versions of their crafts.
I am hoping for SNC, but Boeing alone, spends multi-billions lobbying.
surprisingly, the damage doesn’t look too bad. it appears that the rocket did not settle back down on the actual launch pad, but just off of it. major repairs will be needed, but not as much as it might have been. high-resolution image in link:
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/d…