A private rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station blew up six seconds into its flight on Tuesday evening.
The Antares rocket, built by Orbital Sciences, was making its third resupply mission to the space station. It was the first failure in five launches of this particular rocket.
The rocket carried no people, and there were no reports of deaths or injuries at the launch site. However there was considerable property damage at the launch pad at Wallops, in Virginia.
The Antares carried 5,000 pounds of food and other supplies for astronauts on board the station, including scientific experiments, including some developed by high school students in Houston. Here’s a detailed manifest of what was on board the rocket.
It’s not clear how the loss of this supply vehicle will affect station operations in the long run. NASA has several supply lines open, including SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, the Russian Progress vehicle as well as international partners. A source at NASA told me that, for the time being, is “good” on supplies.
Orbital has contracted with NASA to perform eight resupply missions.
The loss of the Antares rocket offers a grim reminder that rocketry is hard, and things can always go wrong.
rocket built from 40 year old surplus Russian engines…what could possibly go wrong??
Good thing there is a more robust strategy for commercial crew.
the ISS is prepared for a “skip cycle” for just this event they will be fine
The rocket engine was probably too strong. I can see the rocket buckle before all the fuel explodes.
Wow, glad nobody was killed or hurt!
If this is a private rocket, why does the headline on the main chron.com page say that a NASA rocket exploded?
Because NASA paid for the launch and it’s carrying NASA cargo to the NASA space station. Yeah it’s semantics, but it’s pretty much a NASA rocket.
@JScott1000
No,it is NOT semantics, it is lazy reporting.
Just because DirecTV pays for a launch that carries a DirecTV satellite, that does NOT make it a DirecTV rocket. DirecTV is the CUSTOMER, just like NASA was the customer here. In fact, Orbital Sciences should reimburse the US taxpayers for the cost of launch and the value of the lost ISS cargo.
Here’s the difference… there are companies that make a living launching satellites to paying customers. Some day there may be companies that make a living selling random cargo delivered to anywhere in space…but presently the only companies launching cargo to the ISS are 100% funded and indemnified by the US Government. So you can call it an Orbital Sciences rocket if you like but the taxpayers will take 100% of the brunt of this failure.
A sad but apt reminder from an earlier (and far more tragic) loss: “Obviously a major malfunction…”
You wanted “commercial” spaceflight, you got it. Now, to truly test the system, the cost and the fix should be directly on Orbital’s shoulders, not the US taxpayer.
AND, $#%@ it, your picture caption is WRONG. It is NOT a “NASA Antares” it is an “Orbital Sciences Antares”.
That is the beauty of fixed price instead of cost plus. The cost will be on Orbital’s shoulders. Not US tax payers. Though more likely on the insurance shoulders and Orbital gets a premiums increase.
That’s not how the contract is written. Otherwise Orbital would not exist. One failure would put them out of business. In other words this one will be 100% compensated by the taxpayers.
@Jscott1 – That is how the contract exists. Hence why companies have something called INSURANCE. The insurance is what makes sure the company does not go bankrupt in the event of 1 failure.
And how exactly are the actuarial tables developed for private rockets going to the ISS? Private insurance would be cost prohibitive, which is why the government indemnifies these companies. I can promise you neither Orbital or a private insurance company will lose a dime on this. The taxpayers will be 100% on the hook.
Never buy a rocket with “Made in Taiwan and Assembly required stamped on it.
Kinda looks like Obama’s credibility…….
Came here to see old people Chron.com commenters take a break from emailing me chain letters and stoic pictures of bald eagles to explain how this was Obama’s fault. Was not disappointed.
Or the level of your intelligence based on that comment alone.
I was kind of surprised to hear that even the manned shuttles have a destruct mechanism in case things go South. I’d hate to be the one that had that responsibility.
The military makes decisions like that every day… blow up the shuttle or watch it crash into Orlando and kill thousands…easy decision for the Air Force.
Read up what happened to the Chinese launch of the Intelsat 708. It is estimated that 200 – 500 people have been killed.
This was not a “NASA” rocket.
I can see the rocket buckle before it explodes. I wonder how many $millions will be spent to determine the rocket was overloaded and/or under designed.
Just curious? Are you a rocket scientist?
Who cares, that is Orbital Science’s problem. That is why fixed cost is so much better than cost plus. You as a taxi customer just ride the taxi. If the taxi broke down, do you really care how much the driver pays to inspect it and fix it?
I read that it was the first time the rocket was launched with a redesigned second stage. Maybe they should have tested the whole package before this launch. Penny pinching, perhaps.
It wasn’t the 2nd stage which malfunctioned.
I came to Chron this morning thinking, “OK, Houston is Space City, and they’re going to have some pretty good coverage of the Orbital Sciences explosion,” — but this is pathetic! The Chron’s owner’s must own stock in Orbital.
Here’s more from the Chronicle: http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/nation-world/space/article/Supply-rocket-explosion-s-significance-It-s-bad-5855436.php?cmpid=twitter-premium&t=47c449c2c9057dc840
This is the private sector in operation. Of course, to some the Government can do nothing right. NASA got out of the launch business and it has been contracted out. I am certain no one will say that the private sector can do nothing right. There is no need to vilify either. Both the government and the private sector are an integral part of America. We should celebrate that.
Goes to show you, doing things on the cheap and outsourcing important, critical things to people like Musk and whichever modern day robber baron owns this company, will always end badly.
“Always”? Given that OSC has launched two successful resupply missions and SpaceX has launched 4 (not counting the demonstration flights), “always” seems a bit overstated.
How can a rocket carry supplies to the international space station without people?
It’s called automation. We have been doing it since 1958.
I’m more curious about how much Joe Taxpayer is on the hook here. Privatization is supposed to allow servicing the space station cheaper. Yet the devil is in the details on this.
Seems to me that the company that built the rocket should be responsible for it and have it insured or be wealthy enough to be self insured. I suspect that’s not the case though and in fact the cost savings to the tax payer is negligible or nonexistent because of contract guarantees and sweeteners.
DING DING DING.
The savings are non-existent in the beginning. But under the “field of dreams” philosophy build it and they will come. Eventually Orbital may have other customers besides the US Government.
Joe Taxpayer won’t have to shell out a dime. OSC will shoulder the cost of replacing the rocket and and the supplies repairing the facility.
Here is a copy of the contract with the details on who pays what:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/418857main_sec_nnj09ga04b.pdf
“Unless the contract specifically provides otherwise, risk of loss or damage to the supplies provided under this contract shall remain with the Contractor until, and shall pass to the Government upon: (1) Delivery of the supplies to a carrier, if transportation is f.o.b, origin; or (2) Delivery of the supplies to the Government at the destination specified in the contract, if transportation is f.o.b, destination.”
John D, point me to a quote from Orbital stating that Joe Taxpayer will not shell out a dime. The contract is not worth the paper it’s written on if it says that. They would file a claim and the government would crumble. I’ve seen it a hundred times.
John D…you posted the wrong contract…that is SpaceX’s contract.
Jscott1, I have already shown the section of the contract which says that the responsibility for loss is on OSC.
In any case, you are the one making the positive claim; the burden of proof is on you. Show me where the contract specifies that the government indemnifies OSC against loss. (Hint: It isn’t there.)
Jscott1000, here is the COTS contract for OSC; II.A.22 is the relevant section:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/418855main_oc_nnj09ga02b.pdf
Just like Faux News. It is a private rocket launch until it blew up then it was a NASA rocket. Way to go Chronicle…I want to know what Eric thinks about this headline.
Time magazine reports some more specifics – 32 CubeSats (plus the Arkyd telescope which apparently is also a 3U CubeSat).
http://time.com/3545524/cause-sought-for-space-supply-rocket-explosion/
Spaceflight Insider merely repeats the info on the press release from NASA.
The payload capsule was named Deke Slayton after the Mercury Seven astronaut. Ironic because Slayton was the only Mercury Seven astronaut who did not get into space during Project Mercury. He had to wait until Apollo-Soyuz for his first space flight.
Just betting on percentages, I’ll put my money on a crack somewhere in solid fuel. Solids burn from their surface in. A crack in the fuel provides a new surface on which to burn, resulting in higher chamber pressure (more fuel burning than planned) and the possibility of a side burn. An overpressure or a side burn can cause the type of failure seen.
The solid fuel 2nd stage was not ignited at the time of the explosion.
It looked to me more as if one of the umbilicals failed to separate properly; there’s a bright flash about nine seconds into the video and a flailing umbilical later on.
But we won’t know for sure until we get the post-mortem.
I think it’s more likely that one of the fuel pumps carrying supercooled liquid oxygen failed internally, as those pumps are subjected to enormous stress from having to spin up rapidly then operate at high RPM in the post-ignition phase to move enough reagent into the motor and produce continuous thrust during lift-off and flight. Perhaps one of the impeller blades had a small defect and fractured under the low-temperature, high-stress conditions — at such a critical point, the pump essentially would explosively self-destruct, producing shrapnel that could easily penetrate the fuel tank(s) above as the rocket motor which it supplied immediately lost thrust. The range officer would then initiate the self-destruct system for the entire rocket at that point.
Just a guess, but I suspect one of the engines failed to develop sufficient thrust at liftoff for some reason, perhaps a pump failure.
Reading the posts here is like watching a ping pong game. The it is it isn’t will give you a sore neck. My vote it that it is.
Too many Monday Morning Quarterbacks spouting their wisdom on this.
Life goes on with or without your criticism.
Question/opinion Eric
Is the work and study done on the ISS still worth the billions of dollars needed to support and maintain it?
It would seem that the value of the station has diminished past the point of the cost to keep it up.
I know all you scientists out there would be willing for the station to go on forever, but there has to be a point where you say “no more money”
In regard to your question, watch this space. I have a long story on ISS coming a week from Sunday.
There simply is no other platform to answer NASA’s outstanding questions about how to keep people healthy and performing on long missions, to test new space technologies in their intended environment, and serve as a National Laboratory for terrestrial industry and science.
Analysis done for the Washington Post found that the number and breadth of scientific publications coming out of the ISS was comparable to other field laboratories of similar complexity and expense. There is no reason not to continue to operate the ISS until its engineering end-of-life.
Personally, I don’t think the ISS should have an “end of life” deorbit as is now planned, but outfitted with fuel tanks and ion-drive motors (of the sort which power the Dawn probe now cruising between Vesta and its next destination Ceres) not only for LEO station-keeping but capable of slowly boosting the entire assembly into higher orbit as space launch systems become available that can provide resupply and crew rotation services.
Things do wear out over time in the harsh environment of space, but if we are to become a truly space-faring species, we should transition into a sustaining strategy that adapts, refurbishes and renews or rebuilds major pieces of hardware like the ISS rather than continue the “build and throw away” type of slash-and-burn legacy followed in space development over the past half-century.
What’s more troubling is we have nothing planned for after ISS. It took decades to plan and construct, but when it’s life is over so will human spaceflight if we don’t have another mission already underway.
JimV, the ion motors powering DAWN are a little too small for the job (90 mN thrust); you’d need several hundred to move the ISS with any sort of reasonable acceleration.
You’d do better to resume the tethered satellite experiments and use that to move the ISS into a better orbit.
JSCott1000, even if we did have something planned for after the ISS, it wouldn’t matter. The next administration would ignore it and start a brand-new proposal, just as Nixon, Reagan, Bush42, Clinton, Bush43, and Obama have.
I would never envision one ion-drive motor for such a large, complex and widely-extended structure as the ISS. However, I do think a distributed array of 4-10 such engines which are scaled-upgrades from the proof-of-concept that Dawn has clearly demonstrated quite well would provide more than adequate thrust applied in long-duration increments capable of both the LEO station-keeping function as well as boosting its orbit to higher altitude over time. Trying to boost such a structure with high-impulse thrusters would risk a catastrophic shear failure from any imbalance due to loss of an individual thruster or control in coordination among the different ones involved. There’s really no good reason to undertake such an orbital transfer in a short-duration timeframe to begin with, so long as the outward-spiraling path to be navigated is clear of debris or other objects.
my boss just said no money for a new SAFER is coming from anywhere.
Commercial cargo is no different from the way we’ve always done it. Rocket blows up so sad for your cargo. we lost two space suits in Columbia accident…shuttle said “sorry” but no money to replace them. we lost a brand new SAFER last week…sorry. no check coming from insurance company…hardware is just gone. anyone thinking otherwise is just dreaming.