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The International Space Station received its first shipment from a private, Virginia-based company in more than two years Sunday following a sensational nighttime launch observed 250 miles up and down the East Coast.
Orbital ATK's cargo ship pulled up at the space station bearing 5,000 pounds of food, equipment and research.
"What a beautiful vehicle," said Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, who used the station's big robot arm to grab the vessel. The capture occurred as the spacecraft soared 250 miles above Kyrgyzstan; Onishi likened it to the last 195 meters of a marathon.
Last Monday's liftoff from Wallops Island was the first by an Antares rocket since a 2014 launch explosion. Orbital ATK redesigned its Antares rocket and rebuilt the pad. While the Antares was grounded, Virginia-based Orbital ATK kept the NASA supply chain open with deliveries from Cape Canaveral, Florida, using another company's rocket.
NASA is paying Orbital ATK and SpaceX to stock the station, but now SpaceX is grounded. The California company is investigating why one of its Falcon rockets exploded in a massive fireball during launch pad testing on Sept. 1.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Tuesday October 25 2016, @06:17PM
The leading hypothesis right now (at least as far as I know) is that a change to speed up the loading procedures allowed the formation of solid oxygen between the carbon-fiber overwrap and the metal liner of the helium tank (which, for efficiency, is positioned inside the LOX tank (a design trick not exclusive to SpaceX)). As the helium pressure increases during loading, it can squeeze out any liquid oxygen between the two layers, but solid oxygen crystals would remain, and solid oxygen in contact with carbon at over a ton per square inch of pressure is pretty much a guaranteed explosion.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 26 2016, @02:42PM
Yeah that's a believable series of events. That fits in with some of the rumors that its not a design or mfgr problem but a ground policy/procedure problem because all you gotta do is not fill the helium tank when its surrounded by solid O2 and you're all good. Heck they could flush the tank with gas He, fill the tank, the flood the compartment with slush and it would be OK as a ground procedure.
Could even be an intersection of our two theories. Usually filling the He tank is super boring even surrounded by solid O2 but this time someone on the ground didn't follow procedure and flush a line leading to water condensation leading to regulator hiccup leading to transient overpressure leading to carbon fibre + sol O2 = kaboom. That would explain some delay if there's two fundamental ground problems and gotta allocate blame / fix proportionately.
Something very similar between redundant IT / CS systems and redundant aerospace designs is the failure modes always involve long chains of ridiculously unlikely stuff that lead to worst possible outcome. Makes accident reports for aerospace and IT interesting to read, anyway.