The new images were taken at the time by Joel Kowsky, a photo editor with the USA space agency in Washington D.C. The photos were posted on NASA’s official Flickr page.
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Two explosions ripped through the rocket, with the second one having the force of 200 tons of TNT, an analysis published earlier this year said.
No, the images you see above aren’t stills from the next Michael Bay movie.
NASA has released new pictures from the 2014 explosion of an unmanned rocket. The company is facing competition for $3.5 billion contract for NASA cargo flights.
Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket suffers a catastrophic failure shortly after lifting off on a robotic cargo mission to the global Space Station on October 28, 2014.
The next Antares rocket is scheduled to launch from Wallops in May 2016, according to Spaceflight Now.
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The AJ-26, incidentally, also has Russian heritage; it’s a refurbished variant of the NK-33 engine, which the Soviet Union built for its N1 moon rocket during the space race. The current cargo haulers Orbital ATK and SpaceX expect to continue their services.
