• Watch online as Antares rocket blasts off on first flight

    Brea Reeves/NASA Wallops Flight Facility

    The sun rises over NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, where the first Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences stands poised to launch on its test flight from Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore on Wednesday.

    By Tariq Malik
    Space.com

    WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — An untested commercial rocket is poised to launch into space from Virginia's Eastern Shore on Wednesday, and you can watch the test flight live online.

    The new private Antares rocket, built by the Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corp., is slated to blast off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at the southern tip of this small island at 5 p.m. EDT. If all goes well, the test flight will pave the way for the future unmanned cargo deliveries to the International Space Station. 

    NASA will broadcast the launch live on NASA TV beginning at 4 p.m. EDT on Wednesday. You can watch the Antares rocket launch webcast on Space.com, courtesy of NASA. Visibility maps released by the Wallops facility and Orbital officials suggest that the rocket could be seen from as far north as Portland, Maine, and as far south as Charleston, S.C., weather permitting. [Photos: Private Antares rocket poised for launch]

    NASA / Wallops Flight Facility

    Wondering if you will be able to view the Antares launch in person? The Wallops Mission Planning lab created this visibility map to help answer that question.

    "The best chance to see the flight extends from about Cape May, N.J., southward through the Outer Banks of North Carolina," Orbital officials explained in an update. "Also, if you happen to be in Bermuda, you will likely have a clear view of Antares as it rockets by."

    More than 100 reporters are expected to descend upon the NASA Wallops visitor's center on Wednesday, as well as a huge crowd of launch fans, center officials said. More onlookers are advised to watch the launch from the nearby Assateague Beach, NASA Wallops spokesman Keith Koehler told Space.com.

    "It's going to be a bright light in the sky," Koehler said.

    The rocket will lift off from Pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a commercial spaceport at the Wallops Flight Facility. The Wallops facility, established in 1945, is NASA's lead center for small suborbital rocket launches and balloon science missions.

    Orbital Sciences Corp.

    This map by Orbital Sciences Corp. shows the launch visibility possibilities for Orbital's Antares rocket on Wednesday.

    The two-stage Antares rocket is designed to launch Orbital's cylindrical unmanned cargo ship, called Cygnus, on at least eight delivery flights to the International Space Station under a $1.9 billion deal with NASA. Orbital is one of two companies with a NASA contract for space station cargo deliveries. The other is Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., which has launched one test flight and two cargo delivery missions to the station since 2012 under a separate $1.6 billion contract.

    For Orbital Sciences, Wednesday's launch is the first major flight test for the Antares rocket. The two-stage rocket is 131 feet (40 meters) tall and about 12.7 feet (3.9 m) wide and will launch toward the southeast out over the Atlantic Ocean during the 10-minute flight.

    The upcoming Antares test flight will not carry a Cygnus spacecraft. Instead, it will carry a mock payload, called a "mass simulator," to mimic a Cygnus vehicle, including three tiny satellites for NASA and one commercial nanosatellite.

    Orbital engineers replaced a faulty valve on the Antares rocket after it halted an engine test on Saturday. With the fix in place, Orbital officials and NASA are now tracking the weather for Wednesday's test.

    "There is a 45 percent chance of favorable weather at the time of launch," NASA officials said in a statement late Monday. "Low clouds are the primary concern for a weather violation."

    Visit Space.com for complete coverage of Wednesday's Antares rocket test flight.

    Editor's note: If you snap a great photo of Orbital's Antares rocket launch that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send photos, comments and your name and location to Managing Editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

    Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

    Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Excitement builds as Antares nears first liftoff

    Brea Reeves / NASA Wallops Flight Facility

    The sun rises over NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, where the first Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences stands poised to launch on its test flight at 5 p.m. Wednesday from Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

    By Tariq Malik
    Space.com

    It's almost show time for a new private rocket on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

    A commercially built rocket designed to launch unmanned cargo ships to the International Space Station is counting down toward its first-ever flight test this week from Wallops Island, Va., a small island that is home to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility and a young commercial spaceport. Liftoff for the rocket, called Antares, is currently set for Wednesday at 5 p.m. EDT.

    "The team is beyond excited," Barron Berneski, spokesman for the Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corp. that built the Antares rocket, told Space.com in an email. [See photos of the Antares rocket test flight preparations]

    Berneski said Orbital Sciences engineers are currently working to replace a valve on the Antares rocket that thwarted an engine test firing on Saturday.

    "Late in the countdown, at about T-16 minutes, the test was halted because the launch team had detected a technical anomaly in the process," Berneski said of the valve glitch in a statement. "A replacement unit will be installed within 24 hours with the goal of maintaining the April 17 launch date."

    The upcoming Antares launch is the highest profile launch yet from the Wallops Flight Facility, which was founded in 1945 and currently serves as NASA's home for balloon science missions and small sounding rocket launches that don't reach all the way into orbit. It is located on the southern tip of Wallops Island, which it shares with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a staging ground for commercial rocket launches overseen by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority.

    Orbital Sciences Corp. / NASA

    The COTS Demonstration Cygnus spacecraft completed a milestone when its Pressurized Cargo Module (PCM) was attached to the Service Module (SM), and all mechanical flight connections were attached. This image was taken April 2.

    Orbital Sciences plans to launch at least eight Antares rockets from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, nicknamed MARS, to deliver tons of cargo to the International Space Station under a $1.9 billion deal with NASA set in 2008. The company is one of two private spaceflight firms with a commercial cargo delivery deal. The California-based SpaceX, which has flown three missions to the station since 2012, is the other and has a $1.6 billion contract to provide 12 NASA cargo flights.

    But unlike SpaceX, which launches its Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon space capsules toward the station from Cape Canaveral in Florida — a mainstay launching ground for American manned and unmanned spaceflight — Orbital Sciences picked the MARS site for Antares flights.

    "MARS has completed construction and testing operations on its launch complex at Wallops Island, the first all-new large-scale liquid-fuel launch site to be built in the U.S. in decades," Orbital Sciences Chief Executive Officer David Thompson said in October 2012 when the company took control of its launch pad at the site.

    Wednesday's Antares rocket launch will not carry a full-fledged Cygnus spacecraft when it blasts off. Since the mission is a test flight, it will carry a "mass simulator" designed to mimic the weight of a real cargo ship.

    Orbital Sciences has dubbed the mission Antares A-ONE and expects the rocket to reach a maximum altitude of between 155 miles and 185 miles (250 and 300 kilometers) above Earth. The mission may also carry a set of tiny satellites for NASA, according to previous mission descriptions.

    The Antares rocket is a two-stage booster designed to launch robotic cargo ships called Cygnus on one-way trips. The Cygnus spacecraft is a one-use vehicle and is designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere at the end of its mission instead of returning cargo to Earth like SpaceX's Dragon capsules.

    If all goes well, Orbital Sciences hopes to launch the first official Antares rocket and Cygnus flight toward the space station later this year.

    "There's still a lot of work to do ahead of the launch, but after nearly five years from concept design to actual launch, it feels great to be at the finish line of the R&D effort and at the starting line for our next big new product line, serving not just NASA cargo delivery, but other launch markets as well,' Berneski said.

    Visit Space.com for complete coverage of Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket test this week.

    Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

    Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • First launch of new private rocket set for April

    Orbital Sciences

    An aerial view of Wallops Island launch site that includes an artist's concept of the Antares rocket on the pad.

    By Mike Wall
    Space.com

    The maiden launch of a new private rocket that eventually aims to loft cargo toward the International Space Station is slated for the middle of April.

    The Antares rocket, which is being developed by aerospace firm Orbital Sciences Corp., will blast off for the first time April 16-18 from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, NASA officials said.

    Antares will launch a simulated payload to a target altitude of 155 miles to 185 miles (250 to 300 kilometers). If all goes well with the test flight, which Orbital is calling A-One, the next step will be a demonstration mission to the space station using Antares and the company's robotic Cygnus capsule, company officials said.

    That test run to the orbiting lab should take place later this year, Orbital has said.

    Virginia-based Orbital Sciences holds a $1.9 billion NASA contract to make eight unmanned supply runs to the station with Antares and Cygnus. The space agency has also signed a $1.6 billion cargo deal with SpaceX for 12 flights with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule.

    SpaceX completed the first of these bona fide supply runs last October, and Dragon is docked to the station now on contracted mission number two. The capsule is slated to return to Earth on March 25 with about 2,670 pounds (1,210 kilograms) of scientific experiments and other gear.

    The deals with Orbital and California-based SpaceX are part of NASA's effort to encourage American private spaceflight firms to fill the void left by the retirement of the agency's space shuttle fleet in 2011.

    While commercial cargo deliveries are already under way, NASA also wants private spaceships to start carrying its astronauts to and from the orbiting lab by 2017. Until that happens, the agency will be dependent on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to provide this taxi service, at about $60 million per seat.

    Cygnus is a cargo-only vehicle, but California-based SpaceX is working on a manned version of Dragon. Other major contenders for a NASA crew contract are Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp., which are developing a capsule called the CST-100 and a space plane called Dream Chaser, respectively.

    Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.

    Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.