









String of cargo disasters puts pressure on space industry

By Kerry SHERIDAN

Miami (AFP) June 29, 2015





What cargo was lost in the SpaceX explosion?

Cape Canaveral, Fla. (UPI) Jun 29, 2015 -While NASA and SpaceX continue to search for answers to the questions of why and how the latest resupply mission prematurely ended in a dramatic explosion, others are mourning the loss of cargo. Cape Canaveral, Fla. (UPI) Jun 29, 2015 -While NASA and SpaceX continue to search for answers to the questions of why and how the latest resupply mission prematurely ended in a dramatic explosion, others are mourning the loss of cargo. Another shot at landing a reusable rocket on a floating barge wasn't the only thing that went up in flames on Sunday morning, so too did food, equipment and science experiments, as well as a variety of expensive, cutting-edge technologies. Students from South Carolina lost an electronic circuitry experiment for the second time. Their first experiment was destroyed on Oct. 28 when an Antares rocket out of Wallops Island, Virginia, exploded just after blastoff. The accident afforded them a chance to make a number of improvements as they rebuilt the experiment. But it was all for naught, as the science project once again exploded in midair. Colorado students are also disheartened by the recent accident. A team of middle-schoolers from Golden, Colorado, lost their microgravity experiment involving live worms, dubbed "wormonauts." "They feel so heartbroken. All of the hard work and they don't have that closure," Shanna Atzmiller, a teacher at Bell Middle School, told the Daily News of her students. "We didn't even realize what we were seeing on the observation deck." Two other student science teams from Colorado also had experiments involving algae and bacteria on board the doomed rocket. Perhaps less heartbreaking, but certainly more expensive, is the loss of two Microsoft HoloLens headsets. The headsets were to offer astronauts an augmented reality experience on board the International Space Station by overlaying digital imagery on top whatever lay in front of their eyes. The technology was going to be used to provide instruction to astronauts as they performed various tasks on ISS. "This new capability could reduce crew training requirements and increase the efficiency at which astronauts can work in space," an anticipatory press release read. Other supplies, equipment and technologies lost -- many for the second time -- included a new spacesuit and a water filtration system, as well as food and water. The astronauts have plenty of food and water to last, but a lack of new equipment and materials may delay some planned activities. The accident puts added pressure on the next ISS resupply mission. The Russian space agency is schedule to launch a rocket and cargo capsule to the space station on Friday. The global space industry is reeling after three cargo disasters in less than a year have delivered a costly blow to efforts to supply astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The explosion of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday also raised new questions about whether US rockets are safe enough to start launching astronauts to space as planned in 2017. "It is unfortunately part of the business. The idea of 100 percent reliability is just not there," said Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. "I am saddened at what happened today but tomorrow we will bounce back." The first in a series of accidents came in October, when Orbital lost its Cygnus cargo carrier due to an apparent flaw in the Ukrainian-made engine aboard its Antares rocket, which exploded shortly after liftoff from Virginia. In April, the Russian space agency lost communication with its ISS-bound Progress cargo capsule, which burned up on re-entry to Earth's atmosphere two weeks later. Then, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket exploded just over two minutes into its flight Sunday, with the Dragon cargo ship and its 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms) of expensive gear falling to pieces in the Atlantic Ocean near the Florida coast. "This is a blow to us. We lost a lot of important research equipment on this flight," said NASA Associate Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier. Crew members living in orbit have plenty of food and supplies to last for the next four months, NASA said, but officials admitted that no amount of planning could have prepared them for three major accidents in a row. "We expected through the commercial cargo program we would lose some vehicles. I didn't think we would lose them all in a one-year time frame," Gerstenmaier said. He added that there was no common link to the accidents, and negligence was not an issue. Rather, he said, the problems show just how difficult it is to fly rockets. "We are essentially operating systems at the edge of their ability to perform." - SpaceX's record - Prior to Sunday, SpaceX had flown its Falcon 9 rocket 18 times in a row without incident. The company, headed by Elon Musk, the cofounder of PayPal and Tesla, also recently won the confidence of the US Air Force to deliver national security payloads to space. SpaceX and Boeing are leading the US commercial industry's race to send astronauts to low-Earth orbit by 2017. The United States has been unable to send astronauts to space since the 30-year shuttle program was retired in 2011, leaving the world's astronauts to travel aboard Russian Soyuz vehicles at a cost of $70 million per seat. "This doesn't change our plans," SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell told reporters after the accident. She declined to say how much the explosion had cost the company. "I don't anticipate this to affect any program that we have ongoing. We must find this cause of failure. We must fix it, and obviously we are going to get back to flight." However, some experts were alarmed by succession of problems -- even if they are unconnected. "People can put a positive spin on it," said analyst John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "But three missions in a row to bring up experiments and supplies? The loss of that cannot be good," he said. "There is no way they can say they are in good shape." - Cargo flies again - The next cargo supply ship to fly to the ISS will be a Russian Progress capsule, blasting off on July 3. A Japanese HTV ship is launching in August, and Orbital -- which like SpaceX has a billion-dollar-plus contract with NASA to supply the ISS -- is expected to launch again sometime in the fall after a one-year hiatus. According to rocket industry analyst Marco Caceres of the Teal Group, the pressure is on for SpaceX to fly again quickly, as soon as it figures out the problem that caused the blast. "The moment they launch again successfully, this accident starts to fade into history really quickly," Caceres told AFP. "The longer they wait to launch again, the more people start talking about, 'Maybe we were too overconfident about SpaceX,'" he added. "The key is not to launch too quickly because back-to-back failures would be disastrous. Really disastrous."

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