Orbital Delays Antares Cygnus Launch For Another Month Or Two Says Ceo Thompson

Orbital's David ThompsonSPACE NEWS' WRITER PETER B. DE SELDING is reporting that the first flight of Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket with the Cygnus space station cargo freighter has slipped again and is not likely to occur before October or November, ORBITAL SCIENCES CHIEF EXECUTIVE DAVID W. THOMPSON said April 20, 2012.In a CONFERENCE CALL WITH FINANCIAL ANALYSTS, Thompson pointed to no specific issue responsible for the latest delay of between one to two months from the previous schedule, announced in late February. He said the certification of the Wallops Island, Va., spaceport and its propellant-handling facilities is proceeding without major incident, and that the launch pad should be turned over to Orbital by mid-June or perhaps a bit earlier.A test firing of the Antares rocket's first stage on the launch pad is now scheduled for early July. The rocket will make its inaugural flight, without the Cygnus cargo carrier, in August under the new schedule. The Antares/Cygnus launch would then occur in October or November, 2012.The Antares medium-lift launch vehicle was rolled to the launch pad built for it at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, in preparation for a hot-fire test of the new rocket now being pushed from spring to summer. The test vehicle will be returned to the processing building while work preparing the propellant-delivery systems at the pad are completed. After the hot-fire test, a second vehicle will be launched to fulfill a milestone under NASA's Commercial Orbital Resupply Services (COTS). AJ26 Aerojet engineOrbital's progress was slowed by a TEST-STAND FIRE at the NASA Stennis Space Center triggered by a kerosene leak in one of the AJ26 ENGINES destined for Antares. Subsequent checks of the remaining AJ26s by Aerojet, which produced them by modifying surplus RUSSIAN NK-33 ENGINES, have turned up no additional cracks as serious as the one that caused the fire.In a previous conference call with FINANCIAL ANALYSTS IN FEBRUARY, Thompson pointed to the delayed on-pad testing as a primary cause for the delay of the launch of the first Antares. Procedural inspection jobs in the tank farms and plumbing that deliver kerosene fuel and liquid oxygen to the rocket after it is erected on the pad remain to be certified. More from SPACEFLIGHTNOW.

Origin: greys-area.blogspot.com