Space – Dark5.tv

SpaceX Releases Explosive Video of Failed Rocket Landing

Under the heading of “Close, but no cigar,” SpaceX released video of its Falcon 9 booster’s failed explosive landing

Today, under the heading of “Close, but no cigar,” SpaceX released video of its Falcon 9 booster’s failed landing following last weekend’s successful launch. This was the company’s first attempt at retrieving one of its boosters for reuse, and it publicly stated that it wasn’t expecting success on the first try. But the video will clearly provide some information on what went wrong with the landing.

It shows the booster drifting above the barge that was its intended landing site; the lighting makes it a bit difficult to tell whether the rocket was oriented vertically at that point. Then, as it was clearly off target and headed past the far end of the barge, the booster tilted heavily in order to re-center itself on the landing site. Unfortunately, it was quite low by that point, and it ended up striking the barge while leaning heavily to one side. That set off the explosion of its remaining fuel, scattering rocket parts out into the ocean.

Initial suggestions from CEO Elon Musk were that the landing problems were the result of failure of the rocket’s stabilizing fins, which could have run out of hydraulic fluid part way through the descent. But the new video appears to suggest that the problems occurred after those fins were mostly superseded by the action of the main rocket engines, which steer and stabilize the craft on its final approach. It is possible, however, that the failure of the fins left the Falcon 9 in a state that the engines couldn’t correct for.

Details of the company’s investigation into the crash landing are still ongoing.

SpaceX Rocket Crashes in First Attempted Boat Landing

‘Close, But No Cigar’: SpaceX had positioned an autonomous barge off the coast of Florida to attempt the first ever Falcon 9 landing on a solid surface.

Private spaceflight firm SpaceX launched its fifth cargo mission to the International Space Station today – but its planned test landing of the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a boat was unsuccessful.

Most rockets are built for a single use only, falling into the sea once their fuel is spent. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has likened this to throwing away your aircraft every time you fly and identified it as a key reason for the high cost of spaceflight.

That’s why SpaceX has attempted to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket,with an eye to reusing it. After previous launches the company has fired up its rockets as they return to Earth, deploying a set of landing legs and reducing their speed but ultimately still landing in the ocean. It has also conducted small-scale land-based tests with its Grasshopper rocket.

For this latest flight, SpaceX positioned an autonomous barge off the coast of Florida to attempt the first ever Falcon 9 landing on a solid surface, following the launch at 947 GMT from Cape Canaveral, Florida, sending an unmanned Dragon capsule on its way to the ISS.

On its way down, the rocket successfully hit the barge, but came in too fast and was destroyed. “Close, but no cigar this time,” tweeted Musk shortly after the attempted landing, which took place around ten minutes after take-off. Musk also said it was too dark and foggy to get video of the landing, but SpaceX now plans to analyse data from the flight and try again with a future launch.

A successful landing will place SpaceX in a league of its own, as the ability to reuse rockets could drastically lower the cost of getting to orbit, though there are many more tests required before we see a second-hand rocket fly into space.

Competitors are already starting to take notice – earlier this week the French space agency, CNES, announced plans to develop its own reusable rocket tech. And in the long term, the ability to land a rocket on solid ground will assist in Musk’s ultimate goal: colonising Mars.

NASA Reveals Incredible View Inside Superstar Eta Carinae

New findings include Hubble Space Telescope images that show decade-old shells of ionized gas racing away from the largest star at a million miles an hour, and new 3-D models that reveal never-before-seen features of the stars’ interactions.

Eta Carinae is a binary system containing the most luminous and massive star within 10,000 light-years. A long-term study led by astronomers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, combined data from NASA satellites, ground-based observing campaigns and theoretical modeling to produce the most comprehensive picture of Eta Carinae to date. New findings include Hubble Space Telescope images that show decade-old shells of ionized gas racing away from the largest star at a million miles an hour, and new 3-D models that reveal never-before-seen features of the stars’ interactions.

Located about 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina, Eta Carinae comprises two massive stars whose eccentric orbits bring them unusually close every 5.5 years. Both produce powerful gaseous outflows called stellar winds, which enshroud the stars and stymy efforts to directly measure their properties. Astronomers have established that the brighter, cooler primary star has about 90 times the mass of the sun and outshines it by 5 million times. While the properties of its smaller, hotter companion are more contested, Goddard’s Ted Gull and his colleagues think the star has about 30 solar masses and emits a million times the sun’s light.

At closest approach, or periastron, the stars are 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) apart, or about the average distance between Mars and the sun. Astronomers observe dramatic changes in the system during the months before and after periastron. These include X-ray flares, followed by a sudden decline and eventual recovery of X-ray emission; the disappearance and re-emergence of structures near the stars detected at specific wavelengths of visible light; and even a play of light and shadow as the smaller star swings around the primary.

During the past 11 years, spanning three periastron passages, the Goddard group has developed a model based on routine observations of the stars using ground-based telescopes and multiple NASA satellites. According to this model, the interaction of the two stellar winds accounts for many of the periodic changes observed in the system. The winds from each star have markedly different properties: thick and slow for the primary, lean and fast for the hotter companion. The primary’s wind blows at nearly 1 million mph and is especially dense, carrying away the equivalent mass of our sun every thousand years. By contrast, the companion’s wind carries off about 100 times less material than the primary’s, but it races outward as much as six times faster.

The images and video on this page include periastron observations from NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, the X-Ray Telescope aboard NASA’s Swift, the Hubble Space Telescope’s STIS instrument, and computer simulations.

NASA Sees Holiday Lights from Space

NASA scientist and colleagues have identified and mapped how patterns in nighttime light intensity change during major holiday seasons around the world.

Even from space, holidays shine bright.

With a new look at daily data from the NOAA/NASA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite, a NASA scientist and colleagues have identified how patterns in nighttime light intensity change during major holiday seasons – Christmas and New Year’s in the United States and the holy month of Ramadan in the Middle East.

Around many major U.S. cities, nighttime lights shine 20 to 50 percent brighter during Christmas and New Year’s when compared to light output during the rest of the year, as seen in the satellite data. In some Middle Eastern cities, nighttime lights shine more than 50 percent brighter during Ramadan, compared to the rest of the year.

Suomi NPP, a joint NASA/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) mission, carries an instrument called the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). VIIRS can observe the dark side of the planet – and detect the glow of lights in cities and towns worldwide. In 2012, NOAA scientists released “Earth at Night” maps, created from VIIRS data. These well-known images are composites – based on monthly long-term averages of data collected on nights with no clouds or moonlight.

The new analysis of holiday lights uses an advanced algorithm, developed atNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, that filters out moonlight, clouds and airborne particles in order to isolate city lights on a daily basis. The data from this algorithm provide high-quality satellite information on light output across the globe, allowing scientists to track when – and how brightly – people illuminate the night.

Christmas and New Year’s in the United States

In the United States, the lights started getting brighter on “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving, and continued through New Year’s Day, said Miguel Román, a research physical scientist at NASA Goddard and member of the Suomi NPP Land Discipline Team, who co-led this research. He and his colleagues examined the light output in 2012 and 2013 in 70 U.S. cities, as a first step in determining patterns in urban energy use – a key factor in greenhouse gas emissions.

In most suburbs and outskirts of major cities, light intensity increased by 30 to 50 percent. Lights in the central urban areas did not increase as much as in the suburbs, but still brightened by 20 to 30 percent.

“It’s a near ubiquitous signal. Despite being ethnically and religiously diverse, we found that the U.S. experiences a holiday increase that is present across most urban communities,” Román said. “These lighting patterns are tracking a national shared tradition.”

Because snow reflects so much light, the researchers could only analyze snow-free cities. They focused on the U.S. West Coast from San Francisco and Los Angeles, and cities south of a rough imaginary line from St. Louis to Washington, D.C. The team also examined lighting patterns across 30 major towns in Puerto Rico, known for its vibrant nocturnal celebrations and for having one of the longest Christmas holiday periods.

“Overall, we see less light increases in the dense urban centers, compared to the suburbs and small towns where you have more yard space and single-family homes,” said Eleanor Stokes, a NASA Jenkins Graduate Fellow and Ph.D. candidate at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, New Haven, Connecticut, who co-led the study with Román.

These new results, illustrating holidays in lights, were presented at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Ramadan in the Middle East

The idea to look at holiday light-use patterns stemmed from one of the first analyses of the new daily lights algorithm, Román said. Colleagues from NASA Goddard and Yale were looking data of Cairo in 2012 and noticed a large discrepancy.

“‘Either you have something going on with your data that’s wrong, or there’s a real signal there that you have to look into,'” Román recalls them saying. When the team investigated the satellite record, they found that the large increase in light output in Egypt’s capital corresponded with the holy month of Ramadan. During Ramadan, Muslims fast during the day, pushing meals and many social gatherings, markets, commerce and more to nighttime hours.

To confirm that the nighttime signal was not merely an instrument artifact, they examined three consecutive years worth of data from 2012 through the fall of 2014. They found that the peaks in light use closely tracked the Islamic calendar, as Ramadan shifted earlier in the summer.

But not all Middle Eastern cities responded the same as Cairo. Light use in Saudi Arabian cities, such as Riyadh and Jeddah, increased by about 60 to 100 percent through the month of Ramadan. Light use in Turkish cities, however, increased far less. Some regions in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon did not have an increase in light output, or even demonstrated a moderate decrease, possibly due to unstable electrical grids or conflict in the region.

“Even within majority Muslim populations, there are a lot of variations,” Stokes said. “What we’ve seen is that these lighting patterns track cultural variation within the Middle East.”

With the high resolution provided by VIIRS, that variation even appears at the neighborhood level. Román and Stokes used data from Cairo to divide the city’s neighborhoods into different socioeconomic groups, based on available records of voting patterns, access to public sanitation, and literacy rates. Some of the poorest and most devout areas observed Ramadan without significant increases in light use throughout the month, choosing – whether for cultural or financial reasons – to leave their lights off at night. But during the Eid al-Fitr celebration that marks of the end of Ramadan, light use soared across all study groups, as all the neighborhoods appeared to join in the festivities. This is telling researchers that energy is providing services that enable social and cultural activities, Stokes said, and thus energy decision-making patterns are reflecting social and cultural identities.

“Whether you’re rich or poor, or religious or not, everybody in Egypt is celebrating the Eid, or the end of Ramadan,” Román said. This demonstrates that the drivers of demand for energy services aren’t just controlled by individual factors, like price; they are also influenced by the beliefs, statuses, and routines of a city’s inhabitants, he added.

Understanding Energy Decisions

“Having a daily global dynamic dataset of nighttime lights is a new way for researchers to understand the broad societal forces impacting energy decisions,” Stokes said. And with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noting that greenhouse gas reductions are going to come from energy efficiency and conservation, scientists and policy makers will need to better understand the driving forces behind energy use.

“More than 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from urban areas,” Román said. “If we’re going to reduce these emissions, then we’ll have to do more than just use energy-efficient cars and appliances. We also need to understand how dominant social phenomena, the changing demographics of urban centers, and socio-cultural settings affect energy-use decisions.”

The VIIRS data also provide a new way of looking at how people use cities, from an energy perspective, Román said. Earth-observing satellites like the Landsat series have mapped the footprints and the built infrastructure within urban boundaries for decades – but the presence of buildings doesn’t reveal whether people are actually using them. The new daily dynamic data is a step in that direction, he said.

“What’s really difficult to do is to try and track people’s activity patterns and to understand how this shapes the demand for energy services,” Román said. “We can now see pieces of these patterns from space – when, where and how often we turn on the lights.”

For more information about the Suomi NPP satellite and VIIRS monthly city lights produced at NOAA, visit:

www.nasa.gov/NPP
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/eog/viirs.html

Mars’ Gale Crater Once Held Vast Lake

New evidence indicates Mars may have been sufficiently warm and wet to support lakes lasting up to tens of millions of years – enough time for life to form.

Humans have been speculating about water on Mars for hundreds of years, and now thanks to the Curiosity rover we’re getting a better sense of how wet the Red Planet used to be. NASA revealed today that the Gale Crater, the 96-mile wide patch of land Curiosity has been exploring since 2012, held a large lake bed for tens of millions of years. What’s more, the agency found that the three-mile high Mount Sharp, which sits in the middle of the crater, was likely formed by sediment deposits from the lake. The big takeaway? Mars was likely warm enough to house liquid water for long periods of time — perhaps even long enough for life to form. “If our hypothesis for Mount Sharp holds up, it challenges the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local or only underground on Mars,” said Ashwin Vasavada, NASA’s Curiosity deputy project scientist. The only problem now is that we still don’t know how the Martian atmosphere supported such a wet environment.

Curiosity previously found evidence of “vigorous” water flow, which fueled long-held speculation about water’s presence on Mars. NASA is now focusing the rover’s efforts on the lowest layers of Mount Sharp, which could give us a better sense of how it was formed. The findings will also help NASA when planning for future missions to seek out evidence of life on Mars, and potentially even affect how the agency approaches manned missions in the 2030s.

Watch: Orion, Delta IV Heavy Liftoff-Up Close

Close-up view as Delta IV Heavy rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

A Delta IV Heavy rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying NASA’s Orion spacecraft on an unpiloted flight test to Earth orbit. Liftoff was at 7:05 a.m. EST.

During the two-orbit, four-and-a-half hour mission, engineers will evaluate the systems critical to crew safety, the launch abort system, the heat shield and the parachute system

Orion is not carrying any people, but NASA wants to find out all it can about how the spacecraft behaves in flight and what conditions it encounters in orbit and during re-entry. That’s why there are 1,200 sensors in place throughout the spacecraft and inside the cabin.

They will gauge the heat shield, radiation levels and exact conditions as Orion flies an orbital pattern that will take it through high radiation zones of the Van Allen belts and of course the scorching temperatures of coming back through the atmosphere. The spacecraft is now more than 2,100 miles above Earth on its way to a peak altitude of about 3,630 miles.

Watch the Orion Spacecraft’s First Test Launch Live

The flight test will send the uncrewed Orion spacecraft 3,600 miles from Earth to test critical systems for the challenges of deep space missions.

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

The December flight test will send the uncrewed Orion spacecraft 3,600 miles from Earth on a two-orbit flight to test critical systems for the challenges of deep space missions.

During the 4.5-hour flight, Orion will travel farther than any crewed spacecraft has gone in more than 40 years, before reentering Earth’s atmosphere at speeds near 20,000 mph and generating temperatures up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Orion will land in the Pacific Ocean where the U.S. Navy and NASA’s Ground Systems Development and Operations Program will recover the spacecraft.

The Orion Flight Test will evaluate launch and high speed re-entry systems such as avionics, attitude control, parachutes and the heat shield. In the future, Orion will launch on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). More powerful than any rocket ever built, SLS will be capable of sending humans to deep space destinations such as an asteroid and eventually Mars.

Animation of NASA’s Orion Capsule Test Flight

Strapped aboard a Delta 4 Heavy, the next generation spacecraft will reach altitudes man-rated ships haven’t gone since the Apollo era. This animation breaks down the Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) from launch to splashdown.

NASA didn’t completely dump the idea of manned extra-terrestrial flight. It just needed some space. Before the agency resumes its manned missions sometime in 2021, NASA will need somewhere to put the astronauts. A new generation of reusable spacecraft, capable of zipping beyond the current limits. Something like the Orion Capsule.

Officially dubbed the Orion MPCV (Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle), this craft is specifically built to travel far, far beyond Low Earth Orbit—like the Moon, Mars, or even deep space—then return safely home. NASA plans to use a fleet of these spacecraft for just about everything, from routine supply runs to the ISS to dropping a crew on a passing asteroid. Developed by Lockheed Martin Space Systems—coincidentally, also the builders of the Delta IV rocket that the Orion rides—the spacecraft is comprised of three primary subsystems.

Launch Abort System

NASA is dead serious about preventing another Challenger disaster. As such, the uppermost section of the Orion is dedicated to the launch abort system (LAS). This tower is designed to instantly detach and rocket the crew capsule to safety if something goes awry during liftoff. It also helps shield the crew from heat and pressure changes during the rise to orbit before popping off and falling back to Earth once the MPCV reaches altitude. Fun fact: the rocket-powered abort motor the LAS uses to separate is actually more powerful than the one employed to shoot John Glenn into orbit back in 1962.

Crew Module

If you are an astronaut aboard the Orion, this is where you want to be. The crew module sits between the LAS and the Service Module (aka the engine and life-support). Constructed of an aluminum-lithium alloy, it can hold up to six crew members along with all their scientific equipment and matched luggage.

It offers a range of improvements over previous capsules including a better-designed cockpit, more-powerful computers, indoor plumbing, and an emergency auto-docking feature. The glass cockpit is actually the same one that Honeywell designed for the Boeing 787. It takes over the repetitive monitoring tasks that Apollo crews used to have to continually check themselves. The auto-dock feature is exactly what it sounds like. Once in orbit, the on-board computers will autonomously rendezvous with other spacecraft rather than rely on humans to do it. However, the most exciting new feature—for the astronauts at least—is the inclusion of a “relief tube” in the capsule. Rather than crap in a plastic bag, as the Apollo guys did, the Orion will use a more discreet and sanitary system originally developed aboard Skylab.

Opposed to the Space Shuttles, with were each used over and over, the Orion crew module is only slightly reusable. Each one is expected to withstand ten flights before being retired. And, interestingly, the crew module has no landing gear—it is a water landing or nothing for the Orion.

Service Module

The service module is where the magic happens. Magic, meaning, the technologies that keep astronauts from freezing/exploding in the dark void. The service module is built of the same aluminum-lithium alloy as the Crew Module. It controls in-flight propulsion—generated by a “7500-pound thrust, pressure-fed, regeneratively cooled, storable bi-propellant, rocket engine made by Aerojet” according to NASA—and provides water and breathable air for the crew as well as prevents the control systems from freezing. It even has unpressurized cargo space for equipment and unlucky stowaways. And, while the LAS pops off just after liftoff, the Service Module remains connected to the Crew Module until the orbiter is ready to begin reentry.

In another American first, the Service Module will incorporate deployable solar panels to capture solar energy while in flight, much like the Mars Landers’ UltraFlex wings. This integration eliminates the need to carry heavy, unreliable fuel cells and all the necessary bits and pieces to use the fuel, which makes the Orion lighter and more agile.

The Big Test

All of these systems are currently coming together at the Kennedy Space Center ahead of a critical test flight scheduled for early 2014. Orion is expected to take off from Space Launch Complex 37, orbit the Earth twice at an altitude of over 3,600 miles—that’s fifteen times LEO—before reentering the atmosphere at 25,000 MPH splashing down somewhere in the Pacific. This, of course, will be an unmanned test flight.

“This flight test is a challenge. It will be difficult. We have a lot of confidence in our design, but we are certain that we will find out things we do not know,” Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer told the Orlando Sentinel. “Having the opportunity to do that early in our development is invaluable, because it will allow us to make adjustments now and address them much more efficiently than if we find changes are needed later. Our measure of success for this test will be in how we apply all of those lessons as we move forward.”

In addition, this flight will also put 10 other critical subsystems through their paces—including the parachute deployment system and the life support software. If the flight is sucessful, NASA may be putting more people on the Moon and reviving the aerospace industry by 2021. If it fails, well, that’s $375 million down the drain. [Physorg – NASA – NYC Aviation – The Orlando Sentinel]

What Is This Strange Space Object? SDSS1133

An international team of researchers analyzing decades of observations has discovered an unusual source of light in a galaxy 90 million light-years away.

The object’s curious properties make it a good match for a supermassive black hole ejected from its home galaxy after merging with another giant black hole. But astronomers can’t yet rule out an alternative possibility. The source, called SDSS1133, may be the remnant of a massive star that erupted for a record period of time before destroying itself in a supernova explosion.

“With the data we have in hand, we can’t yet distinguish between these two scenarios,” said lead researcher Michael Koss, an astronomer at ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. “One exciting discovery made with NASA’s Swift is that the brightness of SDSS1133 has changed little in optical or ultraviolet light for a decade, which is not something typically seen in a young supernova remnant.”

In a study published in the Nov. 21 edition of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Koss and his colleagues report that the source has brightened significantly in visible light during the past six months, a trend that, if maintained, would bolster the black hole interpretation. To analyze the object in greater detail, the team is planning ultraviolet observations with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope in October 2015.

Whatever SDSS1133 is, it’s persistent. The team was able to detect it in astronomical surveys dating back more than 60 years.

An international team of researchers analyzing decades of observations from many facilities, including NASA’s Swift satellite, has discovered an unusual source of light in a galaxy some 90 million light-years away.

The mystery object is part of the dwarf galaxy Markarian 177, located in the bowl of the Big Dipper, a well-known star pattern within the constellation Ursa Major. Although supermassive black holes usually occupy galactic centers, SDSS1133 is located at least 2,600 light-years from its host galaxy’s core.

In June 2013, the researchers obtained high-resolution near-infrared images of the object using the 10-meter Keck II telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. They reveal the emitting region of SDSS1133 is less than 40 light-years across and that the center of Markarian 177 shows evidence of intense star formation and other features indicating a recent disturbance.

“We suspect we’re seeing the aftermath of a merger of two small galaxies and their central black holes,” said co-author Laura Blecha, an Einstein Fellow in the University of Maryland’s Department of Astronomy and a leading theorist in simulating recoils, or “kicks,” in merging black holes. “Astronomers searching for recoiling black holes have been unable to confirm a detection, so finding even one of these sources would be a major discovery.”

The collision and merger of two galaxies disrupts their shapes and results in new episodes of star formation. If each galaxy possesses a central supermassive black hole, they will form a bound binary pair at the center of the merged galaxy before ultimately coalescing themselves.

Merging black holes release a large amount of energy in the form of gravitational radiation, a consequence of Einstein’s theory of gravity. Waves in the fabric of space-time ripple outward in all directions from accelerating masses. If both black holes have equal masses and spins, their merger emits gravitational waves uniformly in all directions. More likely, the black hole masses and spins will be different, leading to lopsided gravitational wave emission that launches the black hole in the opposite direction.

The kick may be strong enough to hurl the black hole entirely out of its home galaxy, fating it to forever drift through intergalactic space. More typically, a kick will send the object into an elongated orbit. Despite its relocation, the ejected black hole will retain any hot gas trapped around it and continue to shine as it moves along its new path until all of the gas is consumed.

If SDSS1133 isn’t a black hole, then it might have been a very unusual type of star known as a Luminous Blue Variable (LBV). These massive stars undergo episodic eruptions that cast large amounts of mass into space long before they explode. Interpreted in this way, SDSS1133 would represent the longest period of LBV eruptions ever observed, followed by a terminal supernova explosion whose light reached Earth in 2001.

The nearest comparison in our galaxy is the massive binary system Eta Carinae, which includes an LBV containing about 90 times the sun’s mass. Between 1838 and 1845, the system underwent an outburst that ejected at least 10 solar masses and made it the second-brightest star in the sky. It then followed up with a smaller eruption in the 1890s.

In this alternative scenario, SDSS1133 must have been in nearly continual eruption from at least 1950 to 2001, when it reached peak brightness and went supernova. The spatial resolution and sensitivity of telescopes prior to 1950 were insufficient to detect the source. But if this was an LBV eruption, the current record shows it to be the longest and most persistent one ever observed. An interaction between the ejected gas and the explosion’s blast wave could explain the object’s steady brightness in the ultraviolet.

Whether it’s a rogue supermassive black hole or the closing act of a rare star, it seems astronomers have never seen the likes of SDSS1133 before.

Antares Rocket Explosion from the Launch Pad

Video from 4 cameras that were on the launch pad to capture the Antares launch… with one of the cameras right in the middle of the fireball.

On the 28th October the Antares rocket launched to the ISS carrying a Cygnus resupply spaceship. Just a few seconds after liftoff there was a failure in the first stage booster causing the rocket to lose power and head back to the launch pad leaving a fiery trail on it’s descent. On hitting the ground the rocket exploded in a huge fireball engulfing the launch pad and surrounding areas.

This video is a compilation of 4 cameras that were on the launch pad to capture the launch. The video runs through each at full speed before slowing down to give you a slow motion of the explosion. One of the cameras was right in the middle of the fireball, with chunks of broken rocket showering down around it.

Credit to:
AmericaSpace and ZeroG News

Mike Barrett AmericaSpace.com
Peter Greenwood Zero-G News
Jeff Seibert AmericaSpace.com
Elliot Severn Zero-G News
Matthew Travis Zero-G News