American Space Preeminence: Fwd: Investigators Complete Initial Assessment in Aftermath of Antares Explosion

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: October 30, 2014 11:42:29 AM EDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Investigators Complete Initial Assessment in Aftermath of Antares Explosion

October 29, 2014
RELEASE 14-303

NASA's Wallops Flight Facility Completes Initial Assessment after Orbital Launch Mishap

An aerial view of the Wallops Island launch facilities taken by the Wallops Incident Response Team Oct. 29 following the failed launch attempt of Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket Oct. 28.
Image Credit: NASA/Terry Zaperach
The Wallops Incident Response Team completed today an initial assessment of Wallops Island, Virginia, following the catastrophic failure of Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket shortly after liftoff at 6:22 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Oct. 28, from Pad 0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
"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 Bill Wrobel, Wallops director. "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. There's no doubt in my mind that we will rebound stronger than ever."
The initial assessment is a cursory look; it will take many more weeks to further understand and analyze the full extent of the effects of the event. A number of support buildings in the immediate area have broken windows and imploded doors. A sounding rocket launcher adjacent to the pad, and buildings nearest the pad, suffered the most severe damage.
At Pad 0A the initial assessment showed damage to the transporter erector launcher and lightning suppression rods, as well as debris around the pad.
The Wallops team also met with a group of state and local officials, including the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, the Virginia Marine Police, and the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Wallops environmental team also is conducting assessments at the site. Preliminary observations are that the environmental effects of the launch failure were largely contained within the southern third of Wallops Island, in the area immediately adjacent to the pad. Immediately after the incident, the Wallops' industrial hygienist collected air samples at the Wallops mainland area, the Highway 175 causeway, and on Chincoteague Island. No hazardous substances were detected at the sampled locations.
Additional air, soil and water samples will be collected from the incident area as well as at control sites for comparative analysis.
The Coast Guard and Virginia Marine Resources Commission reported today they have not observed any obvious signs of water pollution, such as oil sheens. Furthermore, initial assessments have not revealed any obvious impacts to fish or wildlife resources. The Incident Response Team continues to monitor and assess.
Following the initial assessment, the response team will open the area of Wallops Island, north of the island flagpole opposite of the launch pad location, to allow the U.S. Navy to return back to work.
Anyone who finds debris or damage to their property in the vicinity of the launch mishap is cautioned to stay away from it and call the Incident Response Team at 757-824-1295.
Further updates on the situation and the progress of the ongoing investigation will be available at:
http://www.orbital.com
and
http://www.nasa.gov/orbital
-end-
Stephanie Schierholz
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
stephanie.schierholz@nasa.gov
Keith Koehler
Wallops Flight Facility, Va.
757-824-1579
keith.a.koehler@nasa.gov

Decades-old Soviet engines powered US rocket that exploded
October 30, 2014 5:51am
US rocket explodes seconds after liftoff. The Antares rocket is seen exploding seconds after liftoff from a commercial launch pad in this still image from NASA video on Wallops Island, Virginia on Tuesday, October 28, 2014. The 14-story rocket, built by Orbital Sciences Corp, bolted off its seaside launch pad at the Wallops Flight Facility at 6:22 p.m. and burst into flames as it fell to the ground with the unmanned Cygnus Cargo Ship that was supposed to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. The cause of the accident was not immediately available. Reuters/NASA
WASHINGTON - The Orbital Sciences rocket that was detonated and exploded after launch was powered by a pair of rocket engines that were made during the Soviet era and refurbished, experts said Wednesday.
The rocket exploded about six seconds after it lifted off from the seaside launch pad Tuesday at 6:22 pm (2222 GMT, 6:22 a.m. PHL time).

A ground controller at Wallops Island issued a command to destroy the vehicle, Orbital representatives said in a press conference late Tuesday, but gave no details on why.

"It is kind of standard procedure, that if you get something in your readings that indicate it is going to fail, you would detonate it sooner rather than later," explained Caceres.

"You don't want that vehicle to fly very high if you know it is going to fail."

John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, agreed.

"There was something dramatic happening to lead the range safety officer to issue a destruct command," Logsdon told AFP.

"They know that something was really wrong and they have all the data from the rocket so it should not take long to find out what went wrong."

It was also the first attempt to launch the Antares 130, a more powerful kind of Antares than the 110 and 120 models that have flown in the past.

"I imagine they will be looking at a lot of issues," said Caceres, including whether there was too much weight on the rocket, or if there was a fuel leak or a corrosion problem.

"Commercial derivative"

The Ukrainian-designed AJ-26 engines date back to the 1960s and 1970s, and Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California has a stockpile that it refurbishes for Orbital Sciences.

Orbital described the AJ-26 engine on its web site as "a commercial derivative of the engine that was first developed for the Russian moon rocket that would have taken cosmonauts to the moon."

In 2010, the company announced it would use the engines for its Taurus II rocket because "it achieves very high performance in a lightweight, compact package."

The Soviet Union poured $1.3 billion in investment over a 10-year period into developing the engines and building more than 200 of them in all, Orbital said.

Space analyst Marco Caceres of the Teal Group told AFP that the AJ-26 is "a powerful engine" that was designed to launch people to the moon, but never did.

"They did have problems with that engine back in the '60s and ultimately they stopped manufacturing it," he said.

In 1993, Aerojet began developing design modifications to make the engine suitable for commercial launches.

The staged-combustion, oxygen kerosene engines underwent testing at NASA's Stennis facility in Mississippi.

In May, an AJ-26 engine blew up during a ground test there, but in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's accident, officials declined to link the two incidents.

Orbital Sciences has begun investigating the cause of the rocket failure at Wallops Island, Virginia but has not released any conclusions yet.

Orbital engineers said there was no alarming signs leading up to the sunset launch.

The accident was the first catastrophic failure since private companies began supplying the International Space Station in 2010.

— Agence France-Presse

Copyright © 2014 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.

AmericaSpace
For a nation that explores
October 29th, 2014
Investigators Complete Initial Assessment in Aftermath of Antares Explosion
By Mike Killian

An aerial view of the Wallops Island launch facilities taken by the Wallops Incident Response Team Oct. 29 following the failed launch attempt of Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket Oct. 28.
Image Credit: NASA/Terry Zaperach
NASA's Wallops Flight Facility Incident Response Team completed their initial assessment of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island today, only 24 hours after the launch of an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket exploded just seconds after leaving its seaside launch pad to resupply the International Space Station and its crew Tuesday evening. Today's assessment gave investigators their first real look at the damage caused to property, infrastructure and environment, but it will take weeks, and likely even months, before the investigation gives NASA and Orbital Sciences a better understanding of what exactly went wrong and how the catastrophic explosion has impacted the surrounding environment.
"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 Bill Wrobel, Wallops director. "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. There's no doubt in my mind that we will rebound stronger than ever."
Antares exploding just seconds after liftoff Monday evening on Wallops Island, VA. Photo Credit: Alex Polimeni / AmericaSpace
Today's observations showed a number of support buildings in the immediate area of the launch site suffered broken windows and imploded doors, with a sounding rocket launcher adjacent to the pad and buildings nearest the pad having suffered the most severe damage. Damage to the transporter erector launcher and lightning suppression rods was extensive, two lightning rods were completely leveled in the explosion and the area is littered with debris.
Environmental assessments are being conducted as well, with the preliminary observations made today showing that the effects of the explosion were largely contained within the southern third of Wallops Island, in the area immediately adjacent to the pad. Wallops' industrial hygienist collected air samples at the Wallops mainland area, the Highway 175 causeway, and on Chincoteague Island as well, with no hazardous substances having been detected at the sampled locations. Additional air, soil and water samples will be collected from the incident area as well as at control sites for comparative analysis.
Investigators also met with a group of state and local officials today too, including the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, the Virginia Marine Police, and the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard and Virginia Marine Resources Commission have both reported no obvious signs of water pollution, such as oil sheens, and no obvious impacts to fish or wildlife resources have been seen, although investigators will continue to monitor and assess the impact of the explosion over the coming weeks and months.
"It is far too early to know the details of what happened," said Frank Culbertson, Orbital's Executive Vice President and General Manager of its Advanced Programs Group, in a statement released Monday night. "As we begin to gather information, our primary concern lies with the ongoing safety and security of those involved in our response and recovery operations. We will conduct a thorough investigation immediately to determine the cause of this failure and what steps can be taken to avoid a repeat of this incident. As soon as we understand the cause we will begin the necessary work to return to flight to support our customers and the nation's space program."
There have been no reports of debris being found on private properties (homes and businesses) located within a few miles nearby, but blown out windows and minor property damage have been reported around the island.
Looking north towards the destruction. Photo: NASA
"While NASA is disappointed that Orbital Sciences' third contracted resupply mission to the International Space Station was not successful, we will continue to move forward toward the next attempt once we fully understand today's mishap," said William Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, in a statement last night. "The crew of the International Space Station is in no danger of running out of food or other critical supplies. Orbital has demonstrated extraordinary capabilities in its first two missions to the station earlier this year, and we know they can replicate that success. Launching rockets is an incredibly difficult undertaking, and we learn from each success and each setback."
As outlined by Ben Evans in our post-launch report, within six seconds of leaving the pad the booster burst into flames, showering burning debris across the launch site. Within minutes, the announcement came from officials at MARS that there was "no indication that personnel are in danger, although significant property damage and significant vehicle damage."
Although ORB-3 was an unmanned mission, unpleasant reminders of the STS-107 disaster were kindled in the clipped exchanges between flight controllers, who were directed to secure their checklists and their handheld notes and to begin the process of locking down all pertinent data which might support the impending investigation. Anything transmitted via their computers will also be scrubbed in the coming hours and days. The presence of classified crypto equipment aboard the ORB-3 Cygnus spacecraft required the area surrounding Pad 0A to be secured, not only as part of the accident investigation, but also in support of security needs. An interim accident investigation team was formed, encompassing representatives of NASA, Orbital, MARS, and launch team personnel, and will be headed by Richard Straka, the Senior Vice President of Orbital's Launch Systems Group.
Anyone who finds debris or damage to their property in the vicinity of the launch mishap is cautioned to stay away from it and call the Incident Response Team at 757-824-1295.

Copyright © 2014 AmericaSpace - All Rights Reserved

NASA experts complete initial assessment after Antares rocket explosion

October 30, 9:37 UTC+3
It will take many more weeks to further understand and analyze the full extent of the effects of the event, NASA said in a statement

© EPA/NASA/JOEL KOWSKY/HANDOUT
Infographics Antares rocket explodes
Overnight to October 29, a US Antares carrier rocket exploded seconds after liftoff from the spaceport in Virginia. The rocket was to carry the cargo spacecraft to the orbit and deliver to the ISS more than 2 tons of payload. Infographics by TASS
WASHINGTON, October 30. /TASS/. A team of experts has completed an initial assessment of Wallops Island, Virginia, where the Antares carrier rocket with Cygnus cargo spacecraft exploded seconds after takeoff, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said in a statement.
"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. There's no doubt in my mind that we will rebound stronger than ever," Bill Wrobel, director of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, was quoted as saying.
NASA said "it will take many more weeks to further understand and analyze the full extent of the effects of the event."
The buildings nearest to the launch pad have suffered the most damage, and a number of them have broken windows and imploded doors, the statement said.
Although no casualties have been reported in the accident, the loss for NASA and companies that had products aboard the spacecraft is estimated at around $200 million.
As for environmental effects of the launch failure, no hazardous substances have been detected in the air samples collected at the Wallops mainland area. "Additional air, soil and water samples will be collected from the incident area as well as at control sites for comparative analysis," the statement said.
Experts of the Ukrainian design bureau Yuzhnoye, which took part in designing and manufacturing the Antares carrier rocket, have launched their own investigation in the explosion, Ukrinform news agency reported.
The two-stage Antares carrier rocket exploded in the air just seconds after liftoff from NASA's space center on Wallops Island in Virginia. It was carrying the Cygnus cargo craft with two tons of payload to the International Space Station, including 720 kilograms of equipment and materials for research experiments.
One of the experiments was to do chemical analysis of the substances formed by meteorites burning in the Earth's atmosphere.
Antares, which was known as Taurus II in the initial phases of its development, was designed for orbiting small payloads of up to 5,000 kilograms. Its developers are the Orbital Science Corporation and Ukraine's Yuzhmash R & D Group.
Under the terms of the project, the Ukrainian side designed and manufactured the first stage of the rocket, while the US company took charge of the second stage and the ground launch site.
The program was partly financed by NASA and the entire cost of its implementation reached $1.9 billion. The first four launches of the Antares carrier rockets were successful.

© 2014 TASS

Orbital Sciences assesses Antares failure
10/29/2014 04:47 PM
By WILLIAM HARWOOD
CBS News

A day after an explosion that destroyed an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket carrying a space station cargo ship, company officials said Wednesday they hope to zero in on the likely cause of the mishap within a week or so, based on a detailed review of telemetry, analysis of video and inspection of recovered debris.

The 130-foot-tall Antares rocket, powered by extensively modified Soviet-era first-stage engines, blasted off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Va., at 6:22 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) Tuesday, kicking off a flight to deliver more than 5,000 pounds of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.

But just 15 seconds after liftoff, the rocket suffered a catastrophic first-stage failure, falling back to Earth and exploding in a huge fireball. The Cygnus cargo ship atop the rocket, loaded with station supplies, also was destroyed.

David Thompson, chairman and chief executive of Orbital Sciences, said an inspection of the launch pad and nearby facilities Wednesday revealed less damage than expected.

"Fortunately, no one was injured as a result of the accident," he told financial analysts in a conference call. "And based on the preliminary inspections that were conducted this morning at Wallops Island, it appears that the launch pad complex itself was spared from any major damage. In addition, the Antares Vehicle Assembly Building and related Cygnus spacecraft processing facilities at other locations within the Wallops area were not affected by the failure in any way."

He said it was too soon to determine what might have triggered the mishap, although a preliminary look at telemetry suggested possible explanations. He did not elaborate.

One natural suspect is the rocket's main propulsion system, powered by two Soviet-era engines originally built for a Russian moon rocket that later was abandoned after a series of in-flight failures. Engines left over from that program were mothballed, and Aerojet Rocketdyne bought about 40 of the high-performance powerplants in the 1990s. The renamed AJ26 engines were refurbished, equipped with modern avionics and exhaustively tested to ensure they were safe to fly.

But an AJ26 engine being test fired last May suffered a catastrophic malfunction. Orbital carried out a major investigation to find out what went wrong and while details were never provided, company officials said the likely cause had been identified and that new test procedures and inspections were implemented to prevent a repeat of the failure.

The engines worked flawlessly during an Antares launch in July and they may have worked as planned during the ill-fated launching Tuesday. But whatever went wrong appeared to start at the base of the rocket, raising questions about the propulsion system. Thompson warned against drawing premature conclusions.

"We still have a lot of work to do in the days ahead to analyze all of the telemetry and video data, to review the recollections and notes of the participants in the operation and to collect all other available information about the flight," he said. "This investigation may, or may not, lead us to the conclusion that the failure was caused by a problem with the Antares first stage main propulsion system.

"As most of you know, the AJ26 rocket engines used in that system have presented us with some serious technical and supply challenges in the past. So not withstanding the previous successful flights of Antares before yesterday, Orbital has been reviewing alternatives since the middle of last year and recently selected a different main propulsion system for a future use by Antares."

Thompson said the company may decide "to accelerate this change if the AJ26 turns out to be implicated in the failure. But this has not yet been decided."

As for how long it might take to figure out what went wrong, he said barring problems or major surprises "it will not likely take very long, I think a period measured in days, not weeks, for the investigation team to define the handful of most likely causes of the accident. It may take a little longer than that to zero in on the final root cause."

Orbital Sciences holds a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to build and launch eight space station resupply missions to deliver some 20 tons of cargo and supplies. SpaceX holds a similar contract valued at $1.6 billion for 12 resupply missions using that company's Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon cargo ships.

NASA officials said the loss of the Cygnus supply ship atop the Antares rocket will not have any near-term impact on station operations. A Russian Progress supply ship was successfully launched from Kazakhstan early Wednesday and SpaceX is on track to launch two more U.S. resupply missions in December and February.

But the next flight of an Antares rocket, which had been targeted for April, could face a delay.

"From our experience in the past, which is not altogether transferrable to this situation, I would anticipate that there will be some delay in the next scheduled Antares launch," Thompson said. "I think a reasonable, best-case estimate would bound that at three months, but it could certainly be considerably longer than that depending on what we find in the review. I would hope it would not be more than a year."

Asked if engineers had seen any clues about the cause of the failure in video or telemetry, Thompson said "the short answer is it's still a little too early to tell." But he said there were hints in the telemetry.

"There are certain specific elements of data that have been preliminarily analyzed to date that point in a particular direction," he said, "but my experience also suggests that sometimes first impressions are not correct ones, and it's very important not to focus too early on what may at first appear to be the cause of an accident like this.

"It's important to do a very comprehensive review and consider things that may at first not appear to be likely causes of a failure just to be sure you don't fixate early on on what initially appears to observers to be the likely cause and end up missing the real root cause. I think we will be substantially smarter on this over the course of the coming days, not weeks. I may be surprised, it may turn out to take longer, but my best guess right now, assuming we proceed in a very diligent and open minded way, we'll be zeroing in within a week or so on where the problem is likely to be found."

In opening remarks, Thompson took time to remind analysts and others listening in that launching rockets is a challenging enterprise and "although they are increasingly infrequent in our business, rocket and satellite failures do still occur."

"Building and launching vehicles into space are among the most challenging and demanding things that government organizations and private companies do," he said. "Despite the diligent efforts of some of the aerospace industry's best and brightest people, sometimes things do go wrong.

"Second and more generally, Orbital has experienced adversity in the past, some of which was more difficult that this. And the company has always emerged stronger as a result. I am determined that we will do so again this time."

© 2014 William Harwood/CBS News

Doomed Antares Rocket Powered by Refurbished Soviet Engines
by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer | October 30, 2014 07:00am ET

The Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket, with the Cygnus spacecraft onboard suffers a catastrophic anomaly moments after launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad 0A, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2014, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky View full size image
The private American rocket that exploded shortly after liftoff Tuesday evening (Oct. 28) was powered partly by an engine built to get cosmonauts to the moon in the 1960s.
Orbital Sciences Corp.'s two-stage Antares rocket crashed in a fiery heap just seconds after launching from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Tuesday, ending an attempted cargo run to the International Space Station just seconds after it began.
Antares' first stage uses two AJ26 engines, which are refurbished variants of the NK-33 built by the Soviet Union for its ill-fated N-1 moon rocket during the height of the space race. While it's unclear at the moment whether or not the AJ26 played any role in Tuesday's mishap, the engines' age and provenance has already stirred debate, as well as a bit of criticism. [Orbital Sciences' Antares Rocket Explosion in Pictures]
An AJ26 engine is placed in a test stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center.
Credit: NASA
View full size image
How Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft service the space station. See how Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft and Antares rockets works here.
Credit: Karl Tate, SPACE.com Infographics Artist
View full size image
Some of the criticism long predates this week's accident. In 2012, for example, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said Antares "honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke."
"It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the '60s," Musk told Wired magazine back then. "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."
SpaceX and Orbital Sciences are competitors; both companies hold billion-dollar contracts to fly robotic cargo missions to the space station for NASA. To date, SpaceX has successfully completed four supply runs using its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket. Orbital had executed two such missions with Antares and its Cygnus spacecraft before Tuesday's failure.
The massive N-1 moon rocket — the Soviet Union's attempted answer to NASA's huge Saturn V booster — lifted off four times, with the first launch coming in 1969 and the last in 1972. All of the launches ended in failure, and the N-1 program was canceled in the mid-1970s. But dozens of NK-33 engines remained in the nation's stockpile.
The California-based company Aerojet (now Aerojet-Rocketdyne) later bought some of these engines, then modernized, refurbished and renamed them to fly in American rockets.
The appeal of of the NK-33/AJ26 is clear, said Orbital Sciences executive vice president Frank Culbertson, a former NASA astronaut.
"There are not very many other options around the world in terms of using power plants of this size, and certainly not in this country, unfortunately," Culbertson said Tuesday night during a press conference after the Antares crash.
AJ26 engines are rugged and robust, he added, and they're tested extensively before flight, both at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and, after incorporation into Antares, at Wallops.
"These engines were taken through the normal testing — acceptance testing and pressure testing, et cetera," Culbertson said of the AJ26s inside the Antares that exploded Tuesday. "We didn't see any anomalies or anything that would indicate that there were problems with the engine."
An AJ26 engine did explode during a test at Stennis in May, however. The engineers investigating Tuesday's Antares failure are doubtless looking back at that mishap with fresh eyes now.
Antares isn't the only American rocket that incorporates Soviet or Russian tech. For example, United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 booster, which launches many payloads for the U.S. military and NASA, uses a Russian RD-180 engine in its first stage.
RD-180s are of much more recent vintage than the old NK-33s. Regardless, their provenance makes some policymakers, military officials and other influential people uncomfortable. The United States should not be dependent on Russian technology to launch important national-security missions, they say.

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