Front and center:
Launch
inferno
Orbital Sciences’ Antares
rocket explodes moments
after blastoff from NASA’s
Wallops Flight Facility, VA, on
the evening of Oct. 28, 2014.
Credit: Ken Kremer
By Ken Kremer
NASA WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY, VA - All was calm, the
air was crisp with hope and the skies were clear as far as
the eye could see as the clock ticked down to T minus
zero for the Oct. 28, 2014 blastoff of an Orbital Sciences
commercial Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight
Facility, VA, – on a mission of critical importance, bound
for the International Space Station (ISS) and stocked with
science and life support supplies for the six humans living
and working aboard.
Tragically it was not to be – as I reported live from the
NASA Wallops press site on that fateful October day.
The 133 foot tall rocket’s base exploded violently and
unexpectedly some 15 seconds after a beautiful evening
liftoff, due to the failure of one of the refurbished AJ26
first stage “Americanized” Soviet-era engines built four
decades earlier.
I watched with anticipation, just 1.8 miles away from
the launch pad, camera in hand with all the other press
and spectators. It seems so far away. We all wish we
could be closer, UNTIL we are rocked with multiple explosions and then we wish we were even further away.
Myself and a small group of space journalists working
together from Universe Today, AmericaSpace and ZeroG News had placed sound activated cameras directly
at the launch pad to capture the most spectacular upclose views for what we all expected to be a “nominal”
launch.
Antares first stage is powered by a pair of AJ26 engines
originally manufactured some 40 years ago in the then
Soviet Union and originally designated as the NK-33.
Overall this was the 5th Antares launch using the AJ26
engines.
Moments after the highly anticipated and seemingly
glorious liftoff, the private Antares rocket suffered a catastrophic failure and exploded into a spectacular aerial
fireball over the launch pad on the doomed Antares/
Cygnus/Orb-3 mission to the ISS.
Our remote cameras were placed directly adjacent
to the Antares pad OA at the Mid-Atlantic Regional
Spaceport (MARS) and miraculously survived the rockets
destruction as it plunged to the ground very near and
just north of the seaside launch pad.
All of our teams cameras and image cards were
impounded by Orbital’s official and independent
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