LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Following a devastating loss of vehicle last year, Orbital ATK is ready to get back to business sending cargo to the International Space Station.
The company will send one cargo mission to the orbiting laboratory aboard an Atlas V rocket (made by United Launch Alliance) this December, and another in March of next year. The company's Antares rocket, which exploded seconds after liftoff on Oct. 28, 2014, will launch again in the first half of 2016, according to company representatives.
Frank DeMauro, vice president of human space systems at Orbital ATK, spoke about the company's current status at the International Symposium of Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) today (Oct. 8) in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He described the loss of vehicle as "painful," but emphasized that only one day after the accident, "the company embarked on figuring out how we were going to return to flight."
Orbital ATK was formed from the merger, finalized in February, of Orbital Sciences Corp. and Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK). The company sends cargo to the space station in its Cygnus spacecraft, and made three successful deliveries to the station between 2013 and 2014. NASA announced in August that it had ordered two more cargo deliveries to the station by Orbital ATK, as part of a Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract signed in 2008. Those deliveries will be made in December and March using the Atlas V rocket, and an upgraded version of the cargo spacecraft called the Enhanced Cygnus, which has a bigger cargo module than the regular Cygnus, DeMauro said.
Orbital ATK had planned to fly the Enhanced Cygnus on future cargo missions, DeMauro said. He praised the collaboration of the Orbital ATK team and ULA in making the Cygnus vehicle compatible with the Atlas V in such a short period of time.
The members of the Antares team, meanwhile, are working to get the rocket ready for flight. One of the major changes to the new rocket will be the use of two RD-181 main engines. A "hot fire" test of the engines is scheduled for early 2016 at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.
"Antares made great progress in getting ready for return to flight," DeMauro said. "The first flight engines have been delivered, they've been integrated on the vehicle. […] So really great job by the Antares team getting ready for that."
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