NEW YORK: An investigation into the explosion of Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket revealed that this explosion occurred due to problem with a turbo pump in the booster’s main engine.
The unmanned rocket, which was carrying a cargo ship to the International Space Station for NASA, exploded about 15 seconds after liftoff from Virginia on Oct. 28, the first of two recent accidents by privately owned U.S. space operators.
To fulfill its contractual obligations to NASA, Orbital Sciences will buy rockets from an unnamed outside source to launch Cygnus cargo ships, as it speeds up plans to incorporate a new rocket engine into its Antares rocket, CEO David Thompson said on a conference call with investors and analysts.
He didn’t identify the rockets Orbital would buy to fill the gap until the re-engine Antares was ready to fly, but said the options included two U.S. launch providers and one in Europe.
The U.S. companies that sell rockets suitable for launching Orbital’s Cygnus capsules include Space Exploration Technology. The privately owned firm, also known as Space X, has a separate $1.6 billion contract to fly cargo to the station for NASA.
Thompson said the cargo trips to the space station could be delivered in 2015 and 2016, as specified and within financial terms of its $1.9 billion NASA contract.
He didn’t say what engine would replace the current AJ-26 motors, though the Russian news agency Tass reported last week that Orbital planned to buy another Russian engine, the RD-195 made by Moscow-based NPO Energo mash.
Antares, which had made four previous successful flights before last week’s failure, uses two heavily modified NK-33 engines originally built for a Soviet moon program that was abandoned after repeated in-flight failures. GenCorp Inc’s Aerojet Rocketdyne division bought about 40 of the mothballed engines for refurbishment and resale as AJ-26 motors.
Thompson said more analysis was needed to confirm that the AJ-26 turbo pump had caused the accident.
