Orbital-3,
also known as Orb-3, was an attempted flight of
Cygnus, an
automated cargo spacecraft developed by United States-based company
Orbital Sciences, on 28 October 2014. The mission was intended to launch at 22:22:38
UTC that evening. This flight, which would have been its fourth to the
International Space Station and the fifth of an
Antares launch vehicle, resulted in the Antares rocket exploding seconds after liftoff.
Spacecraft

This would have been the third of eight flights by Orbital Sciences under the
Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-1) contract with
NASA. This was the first attempted flight of the
Antares 130, which uses a more powerful
Castor 30XL second stage, and the last flight of the standard-sized Cygnus Pressurized Cargo Module.
In an Orbital Sciences tradition, this Cygnus spacecraft was named S.S. ''
Deke Slayton'' after one of NASA's original
Mercury Seven astronaut
An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...
s and Director of Flight Operations, who died in 1993.
Launch and early operations
The mission was scheduled to launch on 27 October 2014 at 22:45 UTC from the
Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at the
Wallops Flight Facility
Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) is a rocket launch site on Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, United States, just east of the Delmarva Peninsula and approximately north-northeast of Norfolk. The facility is operated by the Goddard ...
in
Wallops Island, Virginia
Wallops Island is a island in Accomack County, Virginia, part of the Virginia Barrier Islands that stretch along the eastern seaboard of the United States of America. It is just south of Chincoteague Island, a popular tourist destination.
Wal ...
, with rendezvous and berthing with the ISS early in the morning on 2 November 2014.
This was the first night-time launch for both the Antares launcher and Cygnus spacecraft.
The launch was scrubbed due to safety concerns of a sailboat entering the
exclusion zone less than ten minutes before launch. A 24-hour delay was put in place, with the next launch opportunity scheduled for 22:22:38 UTC on 28 October 2014.
Launch failure
The Antares rocket carrying the Orb-3 Cygnus launched as scheduled from
Launch Pad 0A on 28 October 2014. Fifteen seconds after liftoff a failure of propulsion occurred in the first stage. The vehicle began falling back to the launch pad and the
Range Safety Officer engaged its
flight termination system just before impact.
The resulting explosion was felt in
Pocomoke City, Maryland, away. The fire at the site was quickly contained and allowed to burn itself out overnight.
[ Initial review of telemetry data found no abnormalities in the pre-launch, the launch sequence, and the flight, until the time of the failure.]
In a press release, NASA stated that there were no known issues prior to launch and that no personnel were injured or missing but that the entire payload was lost and there was significant damage to the launch pad. On 29 October 2014, teams of investigators began examining debris at the crash site, while a survey the same day found that there was no serious damage to the launch pad and site fuel tanks, although repairs would be required.
Subsequent investigation found that the LOX turbopump had exploded, which in turn, caused a shock wave that severed surrounding propellant lines and started a fire from leaking fuel. The fire damaged various components in the thrust section leading to the engines gradually being shut down, although a specific reason for the failure could not be determined. Possible causes were a defective pump bearing, ingestion of loose debris, or a manufacturing defect.
Payload
Orb-3 carried a variety of NASA-manifested payloads, some determined fairly late in the days before the launch. The Cygnus cargo vehicle carried of supplies and experiments meant for the International Space Station.[ It included some CubeSats to be launched from the International Space Station.
]
Flock-1d
Planet Labs
Planet Labs PBC (formerly Planet Labs, Inc. and Cosmogia, Inc.) is an American public Earth imaging company based in San Francisco, California. Their goal is to image the entirety of the Earth daily to monitor changes and pinpoint trends.
The co ...
was launching Flock-1d, its next flock of 26 Earth observation nanosatellites. After the accident they stated that this would not set them back due to their approach to space involving many satellites in various constellations.
Arkyd-3
Arkyd-3 was a 3U CubeSat technology demonstrator from private company Planetary Resources (PRI). PRI had packaged a number of the non-optical satellite technologies of its larger Arkyd-100
Planetary Resources, Inc., formerly known as Arkyd Astronautics, was an American company that was formed on 1 January 2009,ARKYD Astronautics Founded http://www.planetaryresources.com/2009/01/draft-arkyd-astronautics-founded/ and reorganized an ...
telescope satellite — essentially the entire base of the Arkyd-100 satellite model revealed in January 2013, but without the space telescope — into a "cost-effective box" of ''Arkyd 3'', or ''A3'', for early in-space flight testing as a subscale nanosatellite. The Arkyd-3 testbed satellite was packaged as a 3U CubeSat form-factor of .[ PRI contracted with NanoRacks to take the ''A3'' to the ISS where it was planned to be released from the airlock in the Kibō module.]
The subsystems to be tested included the avionics, attitude determination and control system (both sensors and actuators), and integrated propulsion system that will enable proximity operations for the Arkyd line of prospectors in the future.
This near-term attempt to validate and mature the Planetary Resources satellite technology was planned to launch in October 2014, before launch and flight test of the Arkyd-100 in 2015.
Other payloads
CRS Orb-3 was carrying eighteen student experiments designed to investigate crystal formation, seed germination, plant growth, and other processes in microgravity
The term micro-g environment (also μg, often referred to by the term microgravity) is more or less synonymous with the terms ''weightlessness'' and ''zero-g'', but emphasising that g-forces are never exactly zero—just very small (on the I ...
as part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program
The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) provides an opportunity for student groups from upper elementary school through university to design and fly microgravity experiments in low Earth orbit (LEO). SSEP is a program of the National ...
(SSEP). It also carried the first open source ArduLab-powered student experiments.[ ]
Two amateur radio
Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...
CubeSats, RACE and GOMX-2, were on board, among other satellites. On board GOMX-2 were two payloads. One payload was a pathfinder experiment for the Small Photon-Entangling Quantum System. designed by the Centre for Quantum Technologies. The other was a sail brake experiment to remove a CubeSat from orbit by increasing aerodynamic drag.
Failure analysis and aftermath
With some preliminary investigation completed, Orbital cited the cause of the Orb-3 launch failure as likely being a turbopump failure in one of the Aerojet Rocketdyne AJ-26 engines, a refurbished Russian NK-33 engine. A NASA report from the failure investigation was released in October 2015. Although NASA and Orbital Sciences agree that the turbopump failed, they differ as to the root cause (machining or debris).
By January 2015, repairs to the Wallops Flight Facility
Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) is a rocket launch site on Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, United States, just east of the Delmarva Peninsula and approximately north-northeast of Norfolk. The facility is operated by the Goddard ...
began; they were completed in the fall of 2016. To meet its Commercial Resupply Services obligations with NASA, Orbital Sciences launched two Enhanced Cygnus cargo spacecraft via Atlas V launch vehicle — CRS OA-4 (''Deke Slayton II'') in December 2015 and CRS OA-6 (''Rick Husband'') in March 2016 — while a new engine was selected and tested for the Antares launch vehicle. Orbital Sciences had been conducting an evaluation and review of an AJ-26 replacement engine prior to the incident, and in the year following the explosion they selected the NPO Energomash
NPO Energomash “V. P. Glushko” is a major Russian rocket engine manufacturer. The company primarily develops and produces liquid propellant rocket engines. Energomash originates from the Soviet design bureau OKB-456, which was founded in 1 ...
RD-181, the export version of the RD-191, to replace the AJ-26 on Antares. The Russians selected this same engine ( RD-193), to replace the NK-33 engine used on Soyuz-2. The redesigned Antares launch vehicle flew again in 2016.
Manifest
Total cargo: [ ]
* Science investigations:
** U.S. science:
** International partner science:
* Crew supplies:
** Equipment:
** Food:
** Flight procedure books:
* Vehicle hardware:
** U.S. hardware:
** JAXA hardware:
* Spacewalk equipment:
* Computer resources:
** Command & data handling equipment:
** Photography/TV equipment:
Total cargo with packing material:
Gallery
File:Fairing installed for Orbital CRS-3.jpg, Integration of payload fairing on Antares rocket
File:Antares CRS Orb-3 rollout (201410240003HQ).jpg, Rollout of Antares to launch pad
File:Antares CRS Orb-3 raised at Pad-0A (201410250004HQ).jpg, Antares being raised at pad.
File:Antares CRS Orb-3 vertical at Pad-0A (201410250005HQ).jpg, Antares vertical at pad
File:Antares Rocket at Sunrise, October 26, 2014.jpg, Against the disk of the rising Sun on launch day
File:Antares Orb-3 launch failure (201410280011HQ).jpg, Explosion of Antares after crashing.
File:Antares Orb-3 launch failure (201410280012HQ).jpg, Aftermath of explosion
See also
* VSS Enterprise crash, which occurred a few days after the Orb-3 crash
* SpaceX CRS-7, another Commercial Resupply Service mission that experienced a launch failure
References
External links
Cygnus Orb-3
at orbital.com
Cygnus Orb-3 press kit
at nasa.gov
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cygnus 003
Cygnus (spacecraft)
Spacecraft launched by Antares rockets
Spacecraft launched in 2014
Satellite launch failures
Supply vehicles for the International Space Station
Articles containing video clips
Space accidents and incidents in the United States