Rocket-Reinforcement

The American Antares launch vehicle exploded at the 10th second after the start from the Virginia Cosmodrome, according to the NASA website. The rocket was supposed to bring into orbit a Cygnus spacecraft with a load for the International Space Station.

Cygnus disposal spacecraft and Antares launch vehicle are developed and built by the private company Orbital Sciences Corporation.

"Orbital demonstrated its unique capabilities of the ability in its first two missions on the ISS at the beginning of this year, and we know that they can repeat this success. The launch of the rocket is incredibly difficult, and we learn at every success and every failure. Today's attempt to launch will not keep us from our work to expand our already successful opportunities to launch a cargo from America to international cosmic cosmic Stations, ”said NASA representative William Gerthenmeier. He emphasized that the accident will not lead to a lack of food or critical materials for the ISS.

The main design of the first stage of Antares was developed by the Ukrainian design bureau "Yuzhnoye" named after Yangel and was manufactured at the production association of the South Machine -Building Plant in cooperation with several Ukrainian enterprises. This is reported by Interfax. It uses the modified NK-33 engines of Russian production, developed by the Samara enterprise of OJSC Kuznetsov.

“By virtue of a certain specificity, it is not possible to talk about the design features of the launch vehicle itself and the interaction of all its systems during the launch on the starting table and in the flight, since this is the field of American experts. However, during yesterday’s start, the AJ-26 engines (modification of the NK-33) worked on the standard mode,” the press service of Kuznetsov OJSC said.

The report also notes that the official requests for attracting specialists of the Samara plant have not yet been received by the investigation of the accident. This will depend on the position of the partner company on the Aerojet Rocketdyne project.

Unsuccessful launch Antares. Official shooting NASA

In August, it was reported that NASA intends to refuse to use the Russian missiles Soyuz to send astronauts to the International Space Station. The reason for this decision was called the growing cost of sending on the "Unions". For one place in the Russian shuttle, the United States is now paying more than $ 70 million. The cost of agreement, noted in NASA, is aggravated by a deterioration in American-Russian relations in connection with aggression of Moscow in Ukraine.