An unmanned Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo supply shuttle launched by NASA at 6:22 pm yesterday, Oct. 28, that was headed towards the International Space Station exploded just after launch. The launch occurred in Wallops, Virginia. Minimal property damage on south Wallops Island is reported. No people were hurt. All the supplies, however, are gone.
While NASA reported that the damage was mostly contained, one spokesperson for NASA, Jay Bolden, reported that there was significant damage to property in the crash.
Meanwhile, early this morning, Oct. 29, Russia successfully launched its cargo vessel from Kazakhstan. The vessel, loaded with 3 tons of food, reached the station six hours later.
Antares is a launch system designed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, a privately owned company.
"There has been a vehicle anomaly. We will update as soon as we are able," the company Orbital tweeted about an hour after the explosion. NASA and Orbital are still looking into exactly why the launch failed. Orbital is holding a conference call with financial analysts and investors this afternoon at 1 pm ET to discuss the failure.
This was the fourth Cygnus cargo shuttle launched for the ISS using an Antares rocket. The first three launched without any problems. However, this was the first use of a larger Antares rocket, which would have allowed the company to carry more cargo with each trip. Fortunately the space station has enough necessary supplies to last the next year. SpaceX is launching a supply ship in December to help restock the station.
NASA awarded Orbital a contract to send eight cargo shuttles to the ISS. The entire cost of the contract was $1.9 billion.
Orbital was using the Antares launch vehicle to launch its Cygnus cargo shuttle.
The cargo shuttle was carrying more than 5,000 pounds of supplies. Here is the exact breakdown of everything the ship was carrying - everything that was lost:
- Science experiments: 1,602.8 lbs
- Crew supplies: 1,649 lbs
- Vehicle hardware: 1,404.3 lbs
- Spacewalk equipment: 145.5 lbs
- Computer resources: 81.6 lbs
Many of the experiments were student-designed studies. One science experiment was testing pea shoot growth in space for a study designed by students at Duchesne Academy for the Sacred Heart in Houston. The purpose of the experiment was to test the effectiveness of the plant as a potential source of vitamins and minerals for astronauts on long space missions.
Another experiment was testing blood flow from the brain in space to help members on the space station with treatments for headaches and other neurological conditions. The mechanism of the study, called the Drain Brain, is a special neck collar that can even be useful on Earth for monitoring brain health and possibly screening for disorders such as Alzheimer's.
A set of experiments designed by student groups under the 'Yankee Clipper' investigations, associated with the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP), lost a lot in the explosion. Young students had developed experiments for the space station to test such things as crystal growth in space and milk spoilage in microgravity.
NASA has a full list of the items contained in the shuttle on its website.
You can watch a video of the rocket exploding dramatically mid-air, filmed by NASA.
NASA announced via Twitter that it would continue releasing information about the crash as it became available and that it would schedule a news conference as soon as possible. Orbital says it did not notice any problems with the shuttle before the launch.
"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," said Frank Culbertson in Orbital's press release yesterday. Culbertson is the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Orbital's Advanced Programs Group.
