Posts Tagged ‘orbital’

Big Boom on Wallops

Tuesday, October 28th, 2014

This sucks. Critical failure for NASA tonight.

The statement from Orbital

Orbital Sciences Corporation confirms that today’s Antares rocket launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility was not successful. Shortly after lift-off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad 0A at 6:22 p.m. (EDT), the vehicle suffered a catastrophic failure. According to NASA’s emergency operations officials, there were no casualties and property damage was limited to the south end of Wallops Island. Orbital has formed an anomaly investigation board, which will work in close coordination with all appropriate government agencies, to determine the cause of today’s mishap.

Is not nearly as creative and thoughtful as the one from William Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Directorate

Orbital has demonstrated extraordinary capabilities in its first two missions to the station earlier this year, and we know they can replicate that success. Launching rockets is an incredibly difficult undertaking, and we learn from each success and each setback. Today’s launch attempt will not deter us from our work to expand our already successful capability to launch cargo from American shores to the International Space Station.


Oh da baby!

Monday, July 18th, 2011


No Borat jokes. This is serious space business. Last Friday’s successful launch of KazSat-2 and SES-3 aboard a Proton/Briz-M launcher was the first time with a dual payload. ILS will now be making money like Arianespace is with their two-at-a-time configuration. Here’s the video…

Read the summary on Caspionet. You’d think Borat did the translation:

On the threshold of the launch, the governmental delegation headed by the Prime Minister Karim Massimov arrived at the space-launching site. For the first time people enjoyed the launch online via Twitter.

The launch of the Proton-M expendable launch system, which happened on Saturday morning, is a historic launch. This is because in the near future Kazakhstan will be able to use a modern and reliable communication satellite. The Russian side and especially producers of the satellite, the Khrunichev space centre said that the KazSat-2 satellite will serve at least 12 years. The project witnessed several revisions from the moment of signing the agreement on the creation of the satellite. As a result, the KazSat-2 satellite received completely new hardware components and a new management algorithm. It also became more energy intensive and the number of transmitters increased to 20. The total capacity of transmitter-responders increased to 4.5 kilowatts, which will help to process larger amounts of data.

Yes, rocket scientists: “enjoyed the launch via Twitter!”

SES-3 is set to replace AMC-1 (formerly GE-1), the very first A2100 spacebus built by Lockheed Martin. It will be interesting to see how customers adapt to the Ku-band side not having the polarization offset (26° counter-clockwise).


One Night in Wallops

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Excellent launch video of the ORS-1 spacecraft from Wallops Island in Virginia. The news, via the USAF:

An Air Force team successfully launched the first Operationally Responsive Space prototype satellite aboard a Minotaur I launch vehicle at 11:09 p.m. EDT June 29 from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. ORS-1 deployed 12 minutes after launch.

This marks a great achievement by the Space and Missile Systems Center’s Space Development and Test Directorate, the Operationally Responsive Space Office and their contractor teams, according to Col. Carol Welsch, the directorate’s acting director and the ORS-1 mission director. ORS-1 is the Operationally Responsive Space Office’s first operational prototype satellite and represents the potential of low-cost, tactically focused satellites designed to provide critical battlespace awareness capabilities to the joint warfighter.

“Words cannot express how proud I am of the entire ORS-1 team,” she said. “The men and women of the Space Development and Test Directorate, the Operationally Responsive Space Office, and our industry partners of Goodrich, ATK, and Orbital have all worked tirelessly to move forward on the concept of a responsive space capability designed to support the warfighter. Their teamwork and dedication is simply inspiring.”

Rapidly developing and fielding ORS-1 is an important step to demonstrating the possibilities to meet emerging and persistent warfighter needs in operationally relevant timelines, Colonel Welsch said.

“Our team was able to develop, integrate, test and launch this system in just over 30 months which is a remarkable achievement,” she said.

ORS-1 was initiated as a result of a requirement to the ORS office from the commander of U.S. Strategic Command to support U.S. Central Command.

Built by ATK in 16 months! In Maryland, no less.