It was late afternoon in the USA when the Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Cygnus spacecraft blasted off on an Antares rocket but a few seconds later an explosion caused their destruction. The disaster occurred at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), part of the Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) NASA’s Wallops Island, Virginia. There are no injuries but damage to the launch pad was reported.

This was supposed to be the third official mission, called Orbital-3, Orbital CRS-3 (Commercial Resupply Service 3) or just Orb-3, of supply transport to the International Space Station for NASA. The security measures were started immediately after the explosion to begin the collection of the debris scattered in the area.

Launches may be delayed for many reasons, on Monday the launch of the Cygnus spacecraft was scrubbed for a curious reason: a boat entered in the path of the Antares rocket. The safety of all the people aboard the boat could’ve been at risk and, although yesterday the explosion occurred shortly after the launch, these measures proved right.

There were already delays due to boats in the area in the past. Often they just wait for the boat to move away but the launch window to the International Space Station is very limited and precisely 10 minutes for this new version of the Antares rocket.

Orbital Sciences called this Cygnus spacecraft Deke Slayton after Donald Kent “Deke” Slayton (1924 – 1993), an aircraft pilot during World War II and a pioneer of the American space program with the Mercury missions, of which he was one of seven original astronauts.

For the CRS-3 mission Orbital, Orbital Sciences used a new version of the second stage of the rocket Antares called Castor 30XL. It’s larger and can develop a propulsion for a longer time due to its greater amount of propellant. This will allow to carry a bigger cargo, in fact this time the Cygnus spacecraft was carrying just over 2,200 kilograms (about 5,000 pounds) of supplies, science experiments and more. The explosion originated in the first stage so it wasn’t possible to evaluate the performance of the new second stage.

Among the instruments that were supposed to be transported to the International Space Station there was Meteor, formally Meteor Composition Determination, which was designed to study the meteors entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Its video equipment was supposed to capture high-resolution images of the atmosphere that were supposed to be processed to identify bright spots left by a meteor that is burning because of friction. The subsequent spectroscopic analysis was to help identify the composition of the meteor, a job can’t be done from the ground because of the interference caused mainly by ozone.

After the success of the nanosatellites constellation called Flock 1 launched from the International Space Station at the beginning of 2014, more of the same type were added to it. Some problems to the launch system had prevented to launch all those scheduled for this summer, another 26 were supposed to be sent on Cygnus hoping for better luck but things went wrong.

The crew of the International Space Station still has food, water and enough oxygen and a Russian spacecraft Progress has just successfully blasted off with other supplies. NASA has a contract with two companies for the cargo transportation to the Station for just such contingencies. At this time it’s not possible to say how long it will take for Orbital Sciences to resume its launches but in the meantime SpaceX can proceed with those of its Dragon spacecraft.

These launches seemed to have become a routine, instead yesterday’s disaster reminds us that rocket launces are always a delicate business and when something goes wrong they can explode. It’s a shame especially for all the scientific instruments and the experiments that were lost.

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