Maiden Flight of Antares Rocket Next Week, to be Followed by 2013 ISS Cargo Mission

In preparation for the first test flight scheduled on April 17, the new Antares rocket was rolled out from its assembly building at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) in eastern Virginia to the launchpad. The medium-sized rocket will become NASA's second commercial route to the International Space Station, and is developed by Orbital Sciences Corp. under the U.S. agency's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. Orbital is using Russian and Ukraininan key components, including two modified engines built in Russia during Soviet times, for this kerosene-fueled rocket which will be capable to deliver cargo to the ISS in an unmanned capsule dubbed Cygnus.

The inaugural test flight next week -- the first of two Orbital needs to finish its COTS work and get its final payments -- will send an instrumented dummy Cygnus into the high-inclination orbit occupied by the space station. A second flight later this year if everything goes as planned will fly close enough to the station to be grappled by its robotic arm and berthed to a pressurized module for cargo transfer.

NASA will then have two ways to deliver supplies to the six-person crew on the ISS, although still no capability to launch astronauts to the station. SpaceX, the other COTS contractor, already has delivered cargo there with its Dragon capsule, launched on its Falcon 9 rocket, and is working on crew transfer capability currently.

After the COTS qualification phase, Orbital Sciences Corp. will also launch the first of eight operational cargo resupply missions to the ISS in 2013 under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA. All COTS and CRS flights will originate from NASA's WFF, which is geographically well suited for ISS missions and can also accommodate launches of scientific, defense and commercial satellites to other orbits.

About further prospects, the company states that "the Antares rocket will launch spacecraft weighing up to 14,000 lbs. into low-Earth orbit, as well as lighter-weight payloads into higher-energy orbits. Orbital's newest launcher is currently on-ramped to both the NASA Launch Services-2 and the U.S. Air Force's Orbital/Suborbital Program-3 contracts, enabling the two largest U.S. government space launch customers to order Antares for "right-size and right-price" launch services for medium-class spacecraft."