Failure to Launch

By Maria Santora 10-29-14

It’s not “rocket science”–huge flames, loud booms, and one NASA spacecraft is a bad combination.

Early Tuesday morning a NASA spacecraft carrying roughly 5,000 pounds of supplies and experiments to the International Space System burst into flames approximately six seconds after launch. Although the unmanned spacecraft did not cause any injuries or deaths, the damages in NASA equipment is insurmountable.

The rocket and spacecraft alone will cost a near $200 million to replace, according to Frank Culbertson, the general manager of Orbital’s Advanced Programs Group. These reparations, in addition to the damages to the Launchpad and the loss of supplies and cargo, will add millions more to the cost.

NASA is unable to decipher what caused the explosion at this time. “What we know so far is pretty much what everybody saw on the video,” Culbertson said. “The ascent stopped, there was some, let’s say disassembly, of the first stage, and then it fell to Earth. … We don’t really have any early indications of exactly what might have failed, and we need some time to look at that.” Orbital Science Corporation will be leading the investigation to discover what went wrong.

Bill Gerstenmaier, a NASA Administrator, says they are using this failure to launch as a learning experience. “We’ll figure out what the failure is, we’ll fix it, and we’ll learn from it,” he stated.

As to when the next spacecraft will be launched, there is no determined timeline.