Orbital ATK, the 4.5 billion company from the merger of Alliant Techsystems Inc and Orbital Sciences Corp, aims to restart the launch of the upgraded Antares rocket that now uses a completely new engine by March next year.
In October 2014, an explosion destroyed the Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket 15 seconds after it blasted off from a launch pad in Virginia after one of the first stage engines from the Soviet-era exploded.
Antares at the time was carrying a Cygnus module loaded with 5,000 pounds of crucial supplies for the International Space Station (ISS) under a contract with NASA. The science experiments, crew provisions, research instruments and other equipment that were bound for the ISS along with the module were all destroyed during the catastrophic explosion.
Official statements revealed that a turbo pump failure of one of the Aerojet AJ26 engines manufactured about 40 years ago and refurbished by Aerojet Rocketdyne was likely the cause of the unwanted event.
Months after the incident, Orbital ATK will be back to spacefaring with the testing of the new Antares rocket engines set in April. On Tuesday, Orbital ATK CEO David Thompson said that the first set of the new rocket engines will be delivered to the assembly base in June.
"There are a variety of other things that will take place in summer and fall, all culminating in final assembly and going out to the launch pad in January of next year for testing. And then exactly a year from now, will be the first launch into orbit of that upgraded version," Thompson said.
Prior to its merger with Alliant Techsystems, Orbital said that Russia's Energomash would be providing the RD-181 engines for the upgraded propulsion system to replace the Aerojet AJ26 engines.
Thompson also said that the next Cygnus module will be launched using the upgraded Antares, and the target launch date would be by the first day of March 2016. He also said that the first launch using the updated vehicle will have a full cargo load.
"What we are going to do in advance of that, in January of next year, is we're going to take the first stage of Antares out to the launch pad with the new engines and do a flight readiness firing, somewhat similar to what we did back in early 2013, in advance of the first Antares flight," Thompson said.
