Reporters run for cover as Antares rocket explodes

Kurt Eberly, who helps lead the Antares rocket program at Orbital ATK, recently spoke with Spaceflight Now about the launcher’s return-to-flight with newly-built engines later this year.

The detective work into the Atlas 5 rocket’s first stage performance trouble during the Cygnus cargo ship launch a week ago has implicated the fuel system as the likely culprit for using up the liquid oxygen supply too quickly.

NASA flight engineer Anne McClain grappled Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus supply ship with the International Space Station’s robotic arm Friday, marking the automated cargo freighter’s arrival after an abbreviated day-and-a-half-long journey from a launch pad in Virginia with nearly 7,600 pounds of experiments, food and provisions.