Staff Writer
The Orbital Sciences
Corporation’s Antares Rocket in Virginia exploded above the launch pad Oct. 28
on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA has been investigating
the cause of the explosion and has blamed it on a “catastrophic failure.” No
one was killed or injured in the incident, but NASA spokeswoman Rachel Kraft
has explained that none of the debris should be touched since the rocket was
transporting 5,000 pounds of materials, some of which were hazardous. The rest
of the materials included student experiments and supplies. Teams have begun
assessing possible damage to Wallops Island where the launch pad is located.
Most of the debris will likely scatter along the south end. The explosion should
not affect the company’s finances for the year or the operations in the space
station even though the next take off, originally planned for April, will have
to be delayed because Orbital Sciences revealed plans on Wednesday to stop
using ageing Russian engines.
These ageing NK-33
engines built in the 1970s are what some investigators believe to be the cause
of the explosion. These Soviet engines were put into storage after some failed launches;
the U.S. company Aerojet Rocketdyne purchased some of these engines in the
1990s and began modifying them until they developed the AJ-26 engine which has
also experienced some failures. The Russian maker of the engine, the Kuznetsov company,
believes that the AJ-26 engine is the one at fault. While space industry
insiders from Moscow predict that the United States will have to rely more on
Russia.
Space and defense
analyst Pavel Felgenhauer agrees that the U.S. will be forced to rely on Russia
and says that it is too early to accuse the Russian engines for being at fault,
“It’s really too early to talk about placing blame, although both sides are
pushing away responsibility. There will be an investigation into what was at
fault. Such mass explosions in the early part of the space era were often
caused by the second-stage engine prematurely going off, so even if it was an
engine we need to find out what exactly went wrong.”
Since the end of the Space
Shuttle program in 2011, Russia has had to deliver supplies to the ISS for the
U.S. American and Russian relationships were already strained with the
different roles taken in the Ukraine Crisis which led to Dmitry Rogozin, in
charge of space and defense industries, threatening U.S. participation in the
ISS following the year 2020 after cancelling the exporting of Russian engines
used to send U.S. satellites into orbit. Now, both countries are avoiding
taking the blame for the explosion.
Orbital Sciences
executive vice president Frank Culbertson notes that the first issues for the
rocket occurred during the first stage, which is when the rocket is powered by
Soviet engines. He defends the modified engine, saying, “As we went through
testing, we did discover that there were some effects of ageing since they had
been in storage for a while, including some stress corrosion cracking. That’s
what we [corrected] with weld repairs and other inspections.”
Elon Musk of SpaceX,
Orbital Sciences competitor, has advised to not use decades-old technology. On
the evening of the explosion, Culbertson assured they will be looking into
this, “We need to go through this investigation and be very thorough before we
determine that’s a factor in this or not.”
