Video of the explosion taken from on-board Cessna 177 flying at 3000' -
http://youtu.be/zarWT7H9t54
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Originally Posted by Dan Roberts, Alan Yuhas in The Guardian
Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment, ranging from “classified cryptographic” gear to school science experiments, was destroyed in a giant fireball on Tuesday evening after technicians detonated a self-destruct mechanism six seconds after launch because of a “catastrophic” equipment failure.
Though stressing the exact cause of the failure was unknown, an executive at Orbital lamented the lack of more modern alternatives to its rocket engines, which were built in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the failed aim of putting Soviet cosmonauts on the moon.
“When you look at it there are not many other options around the world in terms of using power plants of this size, certainly not in this country, unfortunately,” Frank Culbertson, Orbital’s executive vice-president, said after the crash.
He also indicated the problem involved failures of the first stage of the Antares rocket, powered by a refurbished Aerojet engine left over from the NK-33 program when the Soviet Union abandoned its moonshot.
“The asset stopped, there was some, let’s say, disassembly of the first stage, after which it fell to earth,” said Culbertson, in a deadpan description of an explosion that could be seen for miles and terrified observers.
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Article here :-
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2...rbital-science
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Originally Posted by Abby Phillip, Sarah Larimer & Amrita Jayakumar, The Washington Post
The rocket’s flight-termination system, which is designed to detect flight anomalies, was engaged shortly after launch, causing it to self-destruct. It is unclear whether that system was triggered by the rocket’s automated on-board systems or by mission control, Orbital Sciences spokesman Barron Beneski said Wednesday.
“A malfunction was detected, the flight termination system was engaged,” Beneski said.
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In Wednesday’s call with investors, Thompson said the failure of the Antares launch could speed up the development of a new propulsion system.
Orbital is already developing a second-generation version of the Antares rocket engine for NASA and is on track to test that in two years’ time, he said.
Stressing that it was still too early in the investigation to know whether the Aerojet Rocketdyne AJ-26 engines, which were used in the first stage of Tuesday’s launch, caused the explosion, Thompson said Orbital “may decide to accelerate this change if the AJ-26 is implicated in the failure.”
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Article here :-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/n...at-went-wrong/