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expected to deliver 20,000 kg (44,000
lb.) of supplies and experiments to
the space station under a $1.9 billion
commercial resupply services (CRS)
contract with NASA.
Orbital CEO David Thompson says
that under the company’s original plan,
it expected to spend roughly two years
reengining the Antares core stage.
“I certainly think we can shorten that
interval, but at this point I don’t know
how much,” he said in an Oct. 29 confer-
ence call with Wall Street analysts.
In the meantime, Thompson says,
the company remains on track to sub-
mit a bid under NASA’s follow-on CRS
contract due next month. And he sug-
gests the mishap could be a blessing in
disguise as the potential to accelerate
reengining could attract new business.
Possibilities for a replacement in-
clude restarting Russian production of
the NK-33, which Aerojet Rocketdyne
would continue to modify for Antares
and potentially other customers; a
solid-rocket-motor solution proposed
by ATK; a single Russian RD-180 used
to power the core stage of the United
Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5; and the
new Russian RD-193 engine.
Thompson says there is an adequate
supply of AJ-26 engines in U.S. inven-
tory to execute the company’s commit-
ment under its initial CRS agreement
with NASA, including a recent one-year
contract extension that was necessary
in order for both Orbital and competi-
tor Space Exploration Technologies
(SpaceX) to meet their obligations.
Orbital built Antares and Cygnus
under NASA’s Commercial Orbital
Transportation Services (COTS) seed-
money efort to promote development
of commercial cargo carriers for the
ISS. SpaceX also used COTS funds to
help develop its Dragon cargo carrier.
Mike Suffredini, the ISS program
manager, says the next Dragon mission
is scheduled for Dec. 9. A Russian Prog-
ress supply vehicle reached the station
early Oct. 29, the night of the failure, so
the crew has adequate food and other
supplies. Even if no resupply spacecraft
reach the station, there are enough sup-
plies on board to last into March.
The lost Cygnus vehicle carried a
new nitrogen tank that is part of a ni-
trogen/oxygen recharging system for
the airlock used to support NASA-
orchestrated spacewalks. The Cygnus
was to deliver the first N2 tank, and the
upcoming Dragon was to deliver the O2
version. Sufredini says a replacement
N2 tank likely will fly aboard the De-
cember SpaceX resupply mission, dem-
onstrating the value of the multicarrier
approach to station resupply.
Overall the failure cost the station
4,883 lb. of cargo, according to figures
supplied by Johnson Space Center. That
included 1,602.8 lb. of science experi-
ments and samples, 1,360.3 lb. of food
and 1,404.3 lb of vehicle hardware. While
the failure was a loss for NASA and Or-
bital, which Culbertson says carried
insurance against payload loss, it also
cost at least two commercial companies
the small satellites they had intended to
launch from the ISS and presented a
revenue loss for the company that sold
them the station-launch services.
Planet Resources, a startup thathopes to mine asteroids for valuable
metals one day, lost its first test space-
craft, the Arkyd 3. And Planet Labs,
an Earth-observation data provider
that uses cubesat-class spacecraft to
provide imagery, lost 26 of its Dove
spacecraft, according to Jef Manber,
managing director of NanoRacks.
Overall, NanoRacks, which pioneered
commercial accommodation on the ISS,
lost 29 customer satellites in the failure,
and a set of “MixStix” student experi-
ments supplied by 18 school districts.
Manber says the company is working
with NASA to arrange passage on a
SpaceX mission for as many replace-
ment payloads as will be available.
“We’re not single-point dependent,”
Manber says. “It’s not like the old days
when, if something [went] wrong, you
were down for two years.”
The COTS program that produced
the commercial cargo vehicles was
started under then-President George
W. Bush, at a cost of $500 million. Mi-
chael Griffin, who launched the pro-
gram as NASA administrator, says fail-
ure was always an option as the COTS
program was set up, and the agency
has planned accordingly.
“At the start of COTS, if we had said
Orbital Sciences will lose one rocket
of the first five it launches, everybody
would have said, ‘I’ll take that,’” Grif-
fin said during the Von Braun Sympo-
sium in Huntsville, Alabama. “That’s
a reasonable percentage for a devel-
opmental vehicle. On the SpaceX side
of COTS, we haven’t lost a launch yet,
although it is inevitable that it will oc-
cur. You’re just not going to develop a
new capability without experiencing
some setbacks.” cWhen Orbital Sciences’ Antares launch vehicle failed shortly after
liftof Oct. 28, it also destroyed a Cygnus commercial carrier loaded with
4,883 lb. of supplies for the ISS. The violent explosion that followed
damaged the state-owned launch pad at Wallops Flight Facility, Virgina.
Gallery See the entire sequence of
photos of the Antares rocket
failure at AviationWeek.com/Antares
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