McAuliffe, who said he had spoken to Orbital’s chairman, agreed that “the damage was not near what it could have been.” But the governor also expressed concern that the state’s liability could have been much higher if the exploding rocket had crashed directly onto the launch pad or related facilities.

“We were very fortunate with this one,” he said.

Orbital attributed the likely cause of the aborted launch to a turbo-pump in one of two reconditioned Soviet engines in the Antares rocket and said the company is likely to discontinue use of the AJ26 engines in future launches.

Thompson said the company would accelerate development of a new propulsion system for the Antares rocket by 2016, but would seek to launch one or two supply missions to the International Space Station next year from launch facilities elsewhere in the U.S. or Europe. “We are in discussions now with three launch providers: two based in the U.S. and one based in Europe,” he said.

He said Orbital will support efforts by the spaceport and NASA, which leases a portion of Wallops Island to the authority, to repair damage “so as to allow Antares launch operations to resume there in early to mid-2016 and continue for the long term.”