NASA WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY, Va.—Orbital ATK [OA] won’t test fly its re-engined Antares launch vehicle before its return to flight under NASA’s Cargo Resupply Services (CRS) program.
Orbital ATK Vice President and General Manager of Antares Mike Pinkston told reporters here in December that the company “is sure” it doesn’t need a preliminary test flight of Antares with its new RD-181 engine because the engine is “as close” to a drop-in replacement as the company can get. Pinkston said with all the “robust” testing performed on the RD-181, developed in Russia by NPO Energomash, Orbital ATK is “completely confident” in moving ahead to flight with just a stage test as a full integrated system verification.
Orbital ATK spokeswoman Trina Helquist said Friday the hot fired-engine will be used in the OA-7 mission set for this fall. Antares, meanwhile, will return to flight in the May-June timeframe to deliver goods and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) (Defense Daily, December 17).
Antares has been out of commission since a launch failure here in October 2014. Orbital ATK blamed one of Aerojet Rocketdyne’s [AJRD] AJ-26 engines for the failure. The two companies reached a settlement last year.
A space industry official said Friday first flights of unproven rockets have higher failure rates than rockets that have already flown. Commercial space advocate and industry consultant Rand Simberg said Friday he doesn’t see a problem with Orbital ATK not test flying re-engine Antares before its return to flight as it is performing a CRS mission that has a low value payload, compared to a high value mission like launching humans. NASA did not respond to requests for comment by press time Friday.
Helquist, in a Jan. 5 email, defended the decision to not test fly the re-engined Antares. She said the Antares is not new, just re-engined, and that the engine has undergone robust hot fire testing at the manufacturer, which includes full power and full flight duration acceptance tests. These tests, she said, fully verify engine performance before shipping.
Helquist also said the RD-181s derive directly from a long line of flight heritage engines with a high success rate and that the hot fire test will verify the performance of the fully-integrated first stage, including the new engines, subsystems and flight-proven core.
“With robust testing performed prior to launch, we have full confidence moving forward without the need for a dedicated test flight,” Helquist said.
Orbital ATK has one more CRS mission on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket remaining. This mission, called OA-6, will take place in March from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Another Orbital ATK CRS mission, OA-8, will take place in 2017. The company has two more missions, OA-9 and OA-10, to wrap up its CRS contract.
ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA].