Wallops Damage Report
Wallops Completes Initial Assessment after Orbital Launch Mishap
“The Wallops Incident Response Team completed an initial assessment Wednesday of Wallops Island, Virginia, following the catastrophic failure of Orbital Science Corp.’s Antares rocket shortly after liftoff Tuesday from Pad 0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.”
i found a higher resolution image of the damage.
it looks like the rocket didn’t land back directly on the lauch pad, which is fortunate. clearly some damage (possibly smoke damage?) to the two standing lightning diverters. the other two lightning diverters are laying on the ground, one is resting on the sea wall! there is clearly heat damage to the strongback and portions of the launch pad nearby. the light poles nearest the launch pad are damaged from heat and fire. there is debris scattered all over the launch site. the white building in the foreground is obviously damaged (i would guess mostly from the shockwave of the blast) as well.
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/d…
Amazing pic. Thanks for posting, Hug Doug. Thank God that no one was injured or killed.
That no one was injured is one of the best and also most amazing things about this event. It speaks volumes about the need to follow safety regulations, no matter how “routine” we think spaceflight has become.
If you zoom in, there is a large double crater in the sand, right next to the near side of the concrete flame bucket. Might be where the tail of the rocket impacted.
that large crater is probably where the second stage was detonated. it’s really hard to tell without a proper “before” photo. this picture helps a little but it’s still not quite clear…
http://upload.wikimedia.org…
If you watch the post crash fires video, taken from the water tower side, most of the intense burning seems to be coming from that area next to the flame bucket.
Some of you out there know your craters better than I do, so let me ask you this — based on what can be seen, is this a ground-impact crater, or a crater caused by an above-ground explosion? Granted, it’s one photo and probably not the best angle, but I figured I’d ask. I’m intrigued by the question of whether the self-destruct triggered as reported, and if it worked as it should have.
i’m inclined to think that the largest explosion that happened just as the rocket reached the ground was the second stage being deliberately destroyed. it could have blasted off, like a missile, in a random direction, if it had not been destroyed.
that large crater is probably where the second stage was detonated. it’s really hard to tell without a proper “before” photo. this picture helps a little but it’s still not quite clear…
http://upload.wikimedia.org…
Looking at the “before” picture, taken from the tall white “LOX?” tower side, there is a paved, blacktop, one lane road that goes right in front of the flame bucket opening. The double crater, in the “after” picture, looks like it’s right in the middle of that paved roadway.
That’s a water tower, actually. used for inundating the launch pad with water for vibration / sound / heat suppression during launches, and also a handy supply of water in case of fires.
that aside, it looks like you’re exactly right. that road has been demolished.
what i wouldn’t give for a few pictures looking at the damaged launch site from the top of the sea wall….
Not only smoke damage. Look closely at the before picture. There are 4 lightening towers. Now only 2. Part of one is hanging over the seawall. The other one is behind the exhaust channel. I would bet that the crater is from the second stage since there is all of the white debris around it and there are several other areas with bright white where I would be pieces of the second stage landed. The blackened area is most probably due to the RP burning in a low oxygen env., hence the soot.
The pad actually much better than the magnitude of the blast would have indicated. Looks like the bird made a nice little crater in the sand near the pad but most of the pad infrastructure looks scorched but not badly damaged.
I’m amazed how little damage there appears to be. It seems like the vehicle may have come down between the pad and the seawall. I’d expect much more debris but some of it may be out of the frame. Looking at the picture one can help but think that it could have been a lot worse.
I wonder what sort of chemicals could have polluted the adjacent ocean? Presumably a thorough Environmental Assessment was done before Wallops was developed- or does it predate the current regs?
(Video of 16 kids whose experiments perished are tough to watch).
Wallops released a statement on Wednesday saying their environmental monitors, both air and water, detected no hazardous substances in the area.
The Cygnus carried significant quantities of highly toxic hypergolic fuel. Nitrogen Tetroxide and Hydrazine. Extremely nasty stuff. The US shot a satellite that was re-entering in order to dissipate the hydrazine high up. The space shuttle had fans on the runway to blow away the fumes before people could emerge.
The hypergolics were specifically mentioned as a hazard at the post-crash press session.
They have plenty of time to fix the pad before the next flight. ABC News said the destruct signal was sent only after it hit the ground. To keep it from taking off again. Either a very bad joke or the second stage solid was destructed. Their went the flaming chunks of solid rocket fuel again. A capsule would probably have cleared though, with the initial altitude gained. There was something that went cork screwing off a long way though.
i’m inclined to think that the largest explosion that happened just as the rocket reached the ground was the second stage being deliberately destroyed. it could have blasted off, like a missile, in a random direction if it had not been destroyed.
I would tend to agree with you about the largest explosion being the deliberate destruction of the 2nd stage. Did you notice the black spot on the water tower? Hit by a flaming chunk of solid propellant maybe?
If you look at the North end of the LOX tank (the near end in the photo), sitting just to the East in the small dump pond that’s there, is that a chunk of the vehicle? Seems slightly improbable that it would have landed right there so precisely, but whatever that is definitely wasn’t there as of 2 years ago when I worked on pad 0A.
the white tank is a LOX tank? it’s amazing it survived being so near to a massive explosion and inferno! and there is debris scattered all over the launch site, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it is a chunk of rocket. see high-resolution image:
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/d…
yes, the white tank on the North side of the pad is the LOX tank. The white tank on the southwest side, near the water tower, is the RP1 tank.
I was really surprised how well things seem to have fared at the pad- based on what can been seen in the photo.
I saw that exact thing too and wondered that as well. It appears like there is a little fence around that area, so something is meant to be there. It only goes partway down the LOX tank. At first glance it looks like the biggest piece of debris, but it could be something that was already there… something goes there with that fence.
Hmm, in this satellite view, it looks like an empty square pond there, so could very well be debris-
https://www.google.com/maps…
Nice, there’s actually a rocket on the pad in that image.
It’s a small cryo dump pond area. The LOX tank ullage vent is also piped to that area. If it works, I’m attaching a picture of it. As you can see, the pic is actually of a monitor in the LCC when we were doing some sort of cryo op.
Cool thanks. That item is definitely not in this shot. That’s a nice cryo fog for Halloween.
An unfortunate failure occurred during Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares launch on October 28, 2014. ATK (ATK)
is conducting a thorough evaluation of any potential implications
resulting from this incident, including current operating plans,
long-term strategies, and the proposed transaction to merge the
company’s Aerospace and Defense businesses with Orbital.
Wow. I was wondering about that merger. Quite a statement from ATK.
On NBC News ( or maybe ABC ) last night, they interviewed a local who said the windows in his place were blown out by the shockwave from Antares.
He lives 7 miles away as the bird flies ( tailfeathers burning). So I am even more impressed at how little pad damage there appears to be from the fireball. Press photographers about 2 miles from the pad reported their faces were lightly scorched from the blast when the wave came thru.
Actually the infrared heat would have been instantaneous, travelling at the speed of light. From that distance I doubt if they would have felt any convective heat which would tend to rise. I’m sure they felt the concussion a few seconds after the blast but other than maybe rattling some fillings loose it would not have burned them, I would think that the scorching was from the infrared heat.
Can I quibble over things being “instantaneous?”
Well since I used the term “speed” then hopefully it was obvious that I wasn’t referring to a literal mathematical instant. However since infrared light will cover the two miles being discussed in 0.000010736 seconds then I think most people would think of that as instantaneous, one definition of instantaneous being “an imperceptibly brief period of time”.
Found another video…
http://youtu.be/k02wS1o9PcA
You can clearly see the water tower deflect from the blast of the second stage.
It’s kind of hard to see for me with the camera moving around like that. I did notice the edge of the fireball just touches the water tower before moving upward. The damage pictures shows a little scorching on one leg of the tower.
Too bad the engines are not seen.