This image taken from video provided by NASA TV shows Orbital Sciences Corp.’s unmanned rocket blowing up over the launch complex at Wallops Island, Va., just six seconds after liftoff
An unmanned commercial supply rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded moments after liftoff Tuesday evening (yesterday morning, Macau time), with debris falling in flames over the launch site in Virginia. No injuries were reported following the first catastrophic launch in NASA’s commercial spaceflight effort.
The accident was sure to draw criticism over the space agency’s growing reliance on private U.S. companies in this post-shuttle era. NASA is paying billions of dollars to Orbital Sciences and the SpaceX company to make station deliveries, and it’s counting on SpaceX and Boeing to start flying U.S. astronauts to the orbiting lab as early as 2017. This was the fourth flight by Orbital Sciences to the orbiting lab.
The Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket blew up over the beachside launch complex at Wallops Island. The company said everyone at the site had been accounted for, and the damage appeared to be limited to the facilities. And nothing on the lost flight was urgently needed by the six people living on the 418-kilometer-high space station, officials said.
Flames could be seen shooting into the sky as the sun set.
Orbital Sciences’ executive vice president Frank Culbertson said things began to go wrong 10 to 12 seconds into the flight and it was all over in 20 seconds when what was left of the rocket came crashing down. He said he believes the range-safety staff sent a destruct signal before it hit the ground.
Bill Wrobel, director of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, said crews were letting the fires burn out late Tuesday and set up a perimeter to contain them in the darkness.
This was the second launch attempt for the mission. Monday evening’s try was thwarted by a stray sailboat in the rocket’s danger zone. The restrictions are in case of just such an accident that occurred Tuesday.
Culbertson said the top priority will be repairing the launch pad “as quickly and safely as possible.”
He said he could not guess how long it will take to determine the cause of the accident and to make repairs. Culbertson said the company carried insurance on the mission, which he valued at more than $200 million, not counting repair costs.
He stressed that it was too soon to know whether the Russian-built engines, modified for the Antares and extensively tested, were to blame.
“We will understand what happened — hopefully soon — and we’ll get things back on track,” Culbertson assured his devastated team. “We’ve all seen this happen in our business before, and we’ve all seen the teams recover from this, and we will do the same.”
The Wallops facility is small compared to NASA’s major centers like those in Florida, Texas and California, but vaulted into the public spotlight in September 2013 with a NASA moonshot and the first Cygnus launch to the space station.
Michelle Murphy, an innkeeper at the Garden and Sea Inn, New Church, Virginia, where launches are visible across a bay about 26 kilometers away, witnessed the explosion.
“It was scary. Everything rattled,” she said. “There were two explosions. The first one we were ready for. The second one we weren’t. It shook the inn, like an earthquake.” Brock Vergakis and Marcia Dunn, Aerospace Writers, Atlantic, AP
No Comments