Video: Antares rocket explodes

First, you see the rocket sputter, then pause suspended in mid-air and crash back to Earth in a blinding ball of flame. If you still have your wits, you brace for the blast wave.

An Orbital ATK investigation into last year’s Antares rocket crash in Virginia identified a decades-old manufacturing defect inside an AJ26 engine turbopump as the most likely cause of the failure, but a team of NASA engineers was not so sure in their report.

The first pair of RD-181 rocket engines set to launch on Orbital ATK’s redesigned Antares rocket are in the final stages of acceptance testing in Russia ahead of their export to the United States in early July, officials said.