![]() ![]() The provisions of this contract require Orbital to transport upwards of 44,000 pounds of equipment, payloads, and supplies to the International Space Station aboard eight missions of its Antares-boosted Cygnus cargo craft by 2016. Photo Credit: Mark Usciak / AmericaSpaceĪs described in AmericaSpace’s A-ONE preview article, the first flight of this new rocket will come at the end of a long and difficult road for Orbital Sciences, the Dulles, Va.-based aerospace company, which in December 2008 won a $1.9 billion slice of NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) pie. It speaks volumes about the quality of the work done by this team and our partners.” Space shuttle veteran and Executive Vice President and General Manager of Orbital’s Advanced Programs Group Frank Culbertson addresses members of the media at a press conference held prior to Wednesday’s planned launch of an Antares launch vehicle from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. “Given that this is a first run for the rocket and the first-time use of a new launch facility, the fact that all systems were performing as planned while the team proceeded through the pre-launch checklists is very encouraging. “The good news is that this is a simple adjustment to the external support systems,” said Culbertson. Weather conditions at Wallops, which remained at less than 50-percent-acceptable for most of Wednesday’s countdown, are expected to improve by the weekend. “Neither issue alone would have caused the umbilical disconnect,” Orbital explained on its website, but added that “the combination resulted in the anomaly.” Yesterday afternoon (Thursday), the Mission Management Team-led by Culbertson, a former astronaut-met to evaluate predicted poor weather forecasts on 19 April and optimum schedules to provide for a sufficiently rested workforce in time for two back-to-back launch attempts on Saturday and, if necessary, Sunday, 21 April. Investigations after the scrub indicated that two factors were to blame for the premature disconnect: a slight hydraulic movement in the TEL and insufficient slack in the umbilical itself to allow for this movement. Orbital’s Executive Vice President Frank Culbertson, who serves as Mission Director for the A-ONE flight, described the issue as “fairly straightforward” to resolve and engineers are presently pushing toward Saturday, 20 April at 5 p.m. flight controllers scrubbed the attempt after a data umbilical linking the Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) to the rocket’s second stage had prematurely disconnected. EDT-a mere 12 minutes ahead of the scheduled liftoff time-Orbital Sciences Corp. Two days after a disappointing scrub, late in the countdown for its “A-ONE” maiden voyage, the Antares booster stands ready for a second launch attempt from Pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island, Va., at the weekend. The launch countdown was proceeding according to schedule, with just a few minutes remaining before launch when the problem cropped up. ![]()
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