Damage should be only to the pad area, as announced and as somewhat clear on the stream. The rocket got into the air but didn't really move laterally before falling back down.
Wow... Never seen that happen. This is going to seriously effect Orbital Sciences. Is there any news on why it failed... I know its a little early but.
Which matches what I thought I saw.At T+3 seconds a fireball is seen coming out of the main engine section. The vehicle experienced a loss of thrust and quickly began to fall down to the ground; at T+6 seconds the rocket exploded, destroying the spacecraft and damaging the launch facility.
Unverified sequence of events on Wikipedia:
Which matches what I thought I saw.
Wikipedia, for something that happened 10 minutes ago. Seriously?
before Antares-120 ok, now new Antares-130 crash :facepalm:
So, a couple of questions.
1) Does NASA lead it's own investigations? Were the shuttle investigations NASA run, or does the government do something else?
2) Do you think NASA will post a video of the failed launch? Yes, it may be a failure and a humilliation to Orbital, but the explosion was quite intense and worth watching again.
3) Also, the lead engineer stated over the intercom on NASA TV that there were some "classified" things in cygnus. Does anybody know what in the world that was about? (No invasion of government privacy.)
The change was a new upper stage. This launch failure seems to have been a problem with the first stage. So I don't see how the new upper stage is relevant.