Cygnus CRS-3 (SS Deke Slayton, ORB-3)

Spacecraft nº:

US spacecraft nº:

Launch data:

Description:

Mission details:

• The Orbital Cygnus Orb-3 cargo ship was destroyed during launch from the Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) Pad 0A at Wallops Island, Virginia on Oct 28, 2014. The lower end of the Antares 130 vehicle exploded 14 seconds after launch at an altitude of about 100 metres, and the vehicle and payloads fell back to the pad, resulting in a large explosion. As well as ISS cargo, the Orb-3 mission was carrying 26 PlanetLabs Flock-1d 3U cubesats, the JPL/U-Texas RACE 3U cubesat, the Arkyd-3 3U cubesat from Planetary Resources, and also the GOMX-2 ship tracking 2U cubesat from GOMX of Aalborg, Denmark. All of the payloads were destroyed. The first stage of Antares 130 is built by Yuzhnoe (Ukraine) and derived from the Zenit tankage; the engines are Aerojet AJ-26 models, which are refurbished/modernized Kuznetsov NK-33s left over from the Soviet N-1 human lunar landing program.
• It is not yet clear what the cause of the failure was, the rocket appeared to be flying normally until a large flash was seen near the base of the rocket, suggesting some kind of problem in the first stage propulsion system as a likely suspect (although a first stage tank structural or plumbing failure is also a possibility).

External links:

• Cygnus fact sheet
• Cygnus 2