The company behind a resupply mission to the International Space Station that ended in a spectacular explosion over a Virginia launchpad has defended the use of ageing Soviet rockets amid growing questions over Nasa’s reliance on private contractors to fill gaps in the US space program.
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.
The technology has been ridiculed by commercial rivals but used regularly by Orbital to resupply the ISS in recent years, despite growing criticism in Congress of Nasa’s reliance on commercial partners to maintain a human presence in space.
“Their rocket honestly sounds like the punchline to a joke,” said Elon Musk, founder of rival SpaceX, in an interview in 2012. “It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the 60s. I don’t mean their design is from the 60s — I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the 60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.”
Amid growing questions over the technology on Tuesday night, Culbertson insisted its age could also be an advantage but said Orbital would carry out an urgent inquiry to determine the cause of the latest failure before launching any further missions.
“The history of this engine has been well documented. Basically this was an engine that was designed to carry cosmonauts to the moon,” he said. “A number of them were bought by Aerojet to be refurbished and Americanised. It’s an extensively tested engine, very robust and rugged.
“We don’t know whether the engine was involved in this or not and that’s something we will try to determine as quickly as possible.
Astronauts on the space station, who watched the launch and were said by Nasa to be “disappointed” at the outcome, will now have to rely on supplies from a Russian launch planned on Wednesday.
Nasa said it would also be reordering the manifest on a separate SpaceX mission due next month to make sure necessary supplies reached the crew before a safety buffer runs out in March.
The accident is likely to have caused extensive damage to Nasa Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and its director, Bill Wrobel, urged members of the public to be cautious in approaching hazardous wreckage near the site. He reported no injuries from the explosion itself.
Mike Pinkston, the Antares program manager for Orbital Science, told Reuters that the spacecraft had been carrying “some classified cryptographic equipment, so we do need to maintain the area around the debris in a secure manner”.
The rocket was propelling an unmanned cargo ship loaded with 5,000lb (2,200kg) of supplies such as food, tools, parts and experiments.
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