This recommendation of the American space agency came in the investigators’ report on the explosion of Orbital ATK’s (OA.N) Antares rocket.
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NASA is weighing bids for the station’s supply contract, which will run from 2017 to 2024.
The doomed flight was to have been Virginia-based Orbital ATK’s third under a $1.9 billion contract to resupply the global Space Station. Due to the heavy lifting capacity of Atlas V, Cygnus will be able to transport more cargo (mass), making a pair of Atlas V/Cygnus missions roughly equal to three or more Antares/Cygnus launches.
Finally, manufacturing or workmanship defects on the E15 LO2 turbopump could have also caused the failure.
Boeing’s blow is the second piece of bad news it has received in under two weeks – its joint bid with Lockheed Martin for the US Air Force’s $80bn programme to build the long-range strike bomber was rejected.
Orbital ATK isn’t the only American spaceflight company with a NASA cargo contract.
SpaceX and Orbital declined to discuss their cargo proposals. NASA had no comment this week about details of the next commercial-resupply contract.
Sierra Nevada spokeswoman Krystal Scordo said the company “was selected to reopen discussions” for the work, while SpaceX spokesman John Taylor said the company won’t comment until NASA makes a final decision.
Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser would provide a smoother, less-stressful return of experiments from ISS to back Earth. At current, this new model of Antares is slated for launch just a few months from now – in March of 2016. SpaceX, founded in 2002 by PayPal co-founder Musk, is the only bidder with a made-in-the-USA entry. For instance, Japan’s HTV has only two more missions left while Europe’s ATV cargo vessel is already retired. NASA did not give a reason for the delay, she said.
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“It has been good to keep a lot of that money in the country rather than sending it off to Russian Federation”, Walter-Range said.
