1. 1. NASAS UNMANNED ANTARES ROCKET BLOWN UP JUST AFTER LIFTOFF BIG BLOW TO NASA
2. 2. INTRODUCTION Antares, known during early development as Taurus II, is an expendable launch system developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation. Able to launch payloads heavier than 5,000 kg (11,000 lb) into low-Earth orbit, it made its inaugural flight on April 21, 2013. Designed to launch the Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station as part of NASA's COTS and CRS programs, Antares is the largest rocket operated by Orbital Sciences. NASA awarded Orbital a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Space Act Agreement (SAA) in 2008 to demonstrate delivery of cargo to the International Space Station. For these COTS missions Orbital intends to use Antares to launch its Cygnus spacecraft. In addition, Antares will compete for small-to-medium missions. Antares made four successful launches to orbit in its first five attempts. On October 28, 2014, an Antares rocket exploded just after liftoff, completely destroying the vehicle and damaging launch pad 0 at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. A range-safety officerreported having observed clear signs that the launch was in trouble, and effected planned destruction of the mission.
3. 3. DESIGN The first stage uses RP-1 (kerosene) and liquid oxygen (LOX) as propellants, powering twoAerojet AJ26 engines, which are modified Soviet-built NK-33 engines. Together they produce 3,265 kilonewtons (734,000 lbf) of thrust at sea level and 3,630 kN (816,100 lbf) in vacuum. As Orbital has little experience with large liquid stages and LOX propellant, some of the Antares first stage work was contracted to the Ukrainian Yuzhnoye SDO, designers of theZenit series. The second stage is a solid-fuel rocket, the Castor 30. Developed by ATK as a derivative of the Castor 120 solid stage, the Castor 30B produces 293.4 kN (65,960 lbf) average and 395.7 kN (88,960 lbf) maximum thrust, and uses electromechanical thrust vectorcontrol. Antares' Castor 30 solid stage was based on the Castor 120 solid motor used as Minotaur-C's first stage.
4. 4. WHY NASA BLEW UP ANTARE Every time NASA launches a rocket, two safety officers have one weighty decision: They have to decide whether to push a self-destruct button if it appears the launch is going awry. If they make the wrong call either way, bad things can happen. Destroy a rocket prematurely, and millions of dollars in equipment and research go up in flames unnecessarily. Allow a malfunctioning rocket to continue, and the lives of people near the launch site could be at risk. Tuesday night, I saw what happens when they make the right call. A 139-foot-tall (43 meters) Antares rocket malfunctioned shortly after takeoff, and was destroyed in a massive explosion at the launch site after safety officers sent a kill signal. The glow from the accident was visible for miles up and down the coast, but because of the safeguards in place, no one was injured.
5. 5. CONTD The flight safety officer and the range safety officer are tasked with deciding whether a rocket is operating properly and either disabling it for safety reasons or letting it proceed. There can be just seconds to decide, and there is no instant replay. For reasons still being investigated, the rocket started behaving erratically and exploded in a mountain of flame and smoke. This inferno burned across an otherwise picturesque post-sunset sky, accented high above the horizon to my right by a sliver of a crescent moon. The explosion happened after safety officers, watching for any of ten specified problems, such as a gross deviation from the flight path, sent a signal from the flight termination system to disable the rocket, although damage from the malfunction may have already doomed it to collapse back to Earth.
6. 6. Even a successful launch produces an incredible amount of smoke and fire as the thrust pushes a 652,000-pound (296,000-kilogram) rocket out of the atmosphere. In this failed launch, fuel that was meant to burn off gradually instead exploded in a ferocious fireball. Spirals of flame fanned out from the launchpad in all directions as the controlled burn gave way to chaos. As the overpressure pushed out from the launchpad, I could feel the explosion as well as see it. Elsewhere, the same shock wave knocked two spectators off the bed of their pickup truck and another off her dock. The blast broke windows and imploded doors in buildings close to the launch site.
7. 7. REFERENCES http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141030-first-person-rocket- explosion-antares/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares_(rocket)
8. 8. THANK YOU