Orbital Sciences [ORB] said Oct. 31 its investigation into the Oct. 28 Antares failure is prioritizing finding, cataloging and securing any elements remaining from the first stage propulsion system.
The company said in an Oct. 30 statement evidence suggests the launch failure initiated in the first stage, after which the vehicle lost its propulsive capability and fell back to the ground, impacting near, but not on, the Wallops Island launch pad.
Orbital said a significant amount of debris remains on the site of the commercial Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) located south of NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility on the eastern shore of Virginia. Orbital said it is likely substantial hardware evidence will be available to aid in determining root cause of the Antares launch failure.
Attention is focusing on the AJ-26 engines Orbital uses in the first stage of Antares. The AJ-26, refurbished by Aerojet Rocketdyne
, is a NK-33 engine developed by Russian manufacturer Kuznetsov in the late ’60s and early ’70s for the Soviet Union’s N-1 lunar rocket. Company Vice President and General Manager of Advanced Programs Frank Culbertson said Oct. 28 it was too soon to know if the AJ-26 was the culprit. Aerojet Rocketdyne is a division of GenCorp [GY].
It is alleged that an AJ-26 failed on a test stand earlier this year, though this has not been publically confirmed. Charles Miller, president of launch consulting company NextGen Space LLC, told sister publication Defense Daily Oct. 29 there has been a lot of “quiet discussion” about the NK-33s used by Orbital in Antares.
“They’ve been having signs of problems,” Miller said. “They are wonderful engines, but they are quite old…That’s considered by most people to be the prime suspect.”
Orbital wants to move away from the AJ-26s, and, in 2013, sued United Launch Alliance (ULA) and its U.S. distributor for the RD-180 RD AMROSS for access to the engine. But Orbital had planned to use the AJ-26 through 2016. Orbital CEO David Thompson referred to a next-generation engine multiple times in an investor call Oct. 30, but didn’t specifically mention the RD-180.
Orbital said Oct. 30 it still appears the launch site itself avoided major damage, which Miller said was crucial to the company getting its Cargo Resupply Services (CRS) for NASA, and overall business, back on track. MARS is the only site Antares is certified to fly from. Orbital spokesman Barry Beneski said Oct. 31 it was “way too early” for the company to know how long the launch pad would be out of commission.
“If that pad is seriously damaged, it may be down for a significant period of time, even if the launch vehicles are given a clean bill of health,” Miller said. “They have multiple launches in the next year, that even if they say ‘We figured out what the problem is, we fixed it,’ the pad may not be ready. It could be a year or two, it could be some time.”
Orbital said Oct. 31 it believes the “on-site data review process” has progressed as far as necessary, so the Accident Investigation Board (AIB) team is transitioning back to their home bases. AIB Chairman Dave Steffy and members of the AIB will immediately take over further development of the “fault tree” that will drive further investigation activities.
Oct. 31 was a travel day, Orbital said, for the remainder of the initial investigators. The company hoped to complete finding, cataloging and securing those remaining pieces of the first stage boosters Oct. 31. Orbital said it would have another update Nov. 3.
Orbital finished NYSE trading Oct. 31 up roughly one-percent to $26.30. It closed trading Oct. 30 at $30.32.