Updates Orbital Sciences' Cygnus CRS Flight 1 through Flight 8 updates.

[fsci123]

Wow... Never seen that happen. This is going to seriously effect Orbital Sciences. Is there any news on why it failed... I know its a little early but.

 

[n122vu]

Damage should be only to the pad area, as announced and as somewhat clear on the stream. The rocket got into the air but didn't really move laterally before falling back down.

FWIW, your current signature has never been more relevant...just sayin'....

 

[Astro SG Wise]

I would say there is no more information yet...

Watching NASA TV now.

 

[Kyle]

Wow... Never seen that happen. This is going to seriously effect Orbital Sciences. Is there any news on why it failed... I know its a little early but.

Way too early to know for sure, but the initial failure looked like it was on the NK-33 engine.

If so, this might very well be the final end of that engine.

 

[Quick_Nick]

Unverified sequence of events on Wikipedia:

At T+3 seconds a fireball is seen coming out of the main engine section. The vehicle experienced a loss of thrust and quickly began to fall down to the ground; at T+6 seconds the rocket exploded, destroying the spacecraft and damaging the launch facility.

Which matches what I thought I saw.

 

[boogabooga]

Unverified sequence of events on Wikipedia:

Which matches what I thought I saw.

Because it was just written by someone that saw what you saw. Nothing more.

Wikipedia, for something that happened 10 minutes ago. Seriously?

 

[Quick_Nick]

Wikipedia, for something that happened 10 minutes ago. Seriously?

Of course. Wikipedia gets a surge of edits for any breaking news.

Just looking at it for the sake of looking at it; not expecting any useful info.

 

[Donamy]

The Castor 30XL sure burned along time.

 

[N_Molson]

Ouch...

 

[Astro SG Wise]

So, real quickly, I saw that Orbital had a new advanced cygnus launch on the 130. Will they do that now that this rocket is downed? If it is an engine problem, will they have to trash it? If so, it will take them a long time before they set that up again.

 

[MattBaker]

before Antares-120 ok, now new Antares-130 crash :facepalm:

The change was a new upper stage. This launch failure seems to have been a problem with the first stage. So I don't see how the new upper stage is relevant.

 

[Donamy]

My guess is from the refueling.

 

[boogabooga]

Well, it defiantly looks like the engine exploded. Whether that was the cause or an effect of something else, I don't know.

 

[Astro SG Wise]

So, a couple of questions.

1) Does NASA lead it's own investigations? Were the shuttle investigations NASA run, or does the government do something else?

2) Do you think NASA will post a video of the failed launch? Yes, it may be a failure and a humilliation to Orbital, but the explosion was quite intense and worth watching again.

3) Also, the lead engineer stated over the intercom on NASA TV that there were some "classified" things in cygnus. Does anybody know what in the world that was about? (No invasion of government privacy.)

 

[Quick_Nick]

Here's video:
http://news.sky.com/story/1362355/us-rocket-explodes-seconds-after-lift-off

 

[SpaceEagle]

I think the defueling yesterday after that boat incident may have did something to the engines.

, SpaceEagle

 

[Astro SG Wise]

Also, for those of you who are social media people, there are some good pictures at #Cygnus.

 

[N_Molson]

Looks like a combustion chamber or turbopump catastrophic failure...

 

[GigaG]

So, a couple of questions.

1) Does NASA lead it's own investigations? Were the shuttle investigations NASA run, or does the government do something else?

2) Do you think NASA will post a video of the failed launch? Yes, it may be a failure and a humilliation to Orbital, but the explosion was quite intense and worth watching again.

3) Also, the lead engineer stated over the intercom on NASA TV that there were some "classified" things in cygnus. Does anybody know what in the world that was about? (No invasion of government privacy.)

1. I don't know.
2. Whether or not NASA does, it has already been posted to YouTube.
3. I did not know that... maybe a classified payload a la early Space Shuttle DoD missions? I was thinking an experiment of sorts. You would think it would be on the Cygnus itself, as I doubt the US would want to bring its classified material aboard the ISS, given the US' current state of relations with Russia.

As for the explosion, I find it ironic that this rocket, which used engines which were based on Soviet N1 engines, failed in a similar manner as the N1-5L disaster. (Not to badmouth Russian engineering - Russia makes some pretty great engines!)

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

The change was a new upper stage. This launch failure seems to have been a problem with the first stage. So I don't see how the new upper stage is relevant.

...unless of course the heavier load on top caused gimbals problems and kaboom, but that would mean some serious design flaw at OSC.

Since the engines were all test-fired before integration, one major line that must be checked is if something was left over inside the engine (this sounds so......Russian, except that it happened on an Ariane 4 in 1990 as well, which were it not for the FTS would have crashed into Kourou town center).