As one of two partners in NASA's commercial cargo program to deliver supplies to the International Space Station, Orbital ATK has received significantly less attention than the other provider, SpaceX. And with Orbital ATK preparing to make just its second launch attempt in more than three years from its home base of Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, it is worth reflecting on why.
First, a few details on the launch: at 7:37am ET on Saturday, Orbital ATK will attempt to launch its Cygnus spacecraft aboard an expendable Antares rocket. The spacecraft will carry 3,338kg of cargo to the space station. The launch from Wallops Flight Facility will be at least partially visible from most of the eastern US coast, with excellent weather conditions forecast.
When NASA created the commercial cargo program more than a decade ago, one of its principal aims was to "stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and operate safe, reliable, and cost-effective commercial space transportation systems." In other words, by helping private companies build lower-cost rockets, not only would NASA benefit, but so too would the broader aerospace community. NASA hoped to turbocharge space entrepreneurs.
With SpaceX, NASA succeeded in this regard. A recent report by a NASA cost analyst found that, through June of this year, the space agency's modest $140 million investment in SpaceX's Falcon 9 has led to that company launching more than 20 payloads for private customers—launches that would otherwise have almost certainly gone to overseas providers. As SpaceX steps up its launch cadence, that number of commercial launches will only grow and should lead to the United States capturing an increasingly large share of the global launch market.
For Orbital ATK, the story has been less fulfilling. Its launch costs per kilogram, according to the cost analysis, are about 50 percent more than those of SpaceX. Perhaps because of this, Orbital ATK has yet to use its Antares rocket for any non-NASA purposes. The Antares booster has launched six times: one was a test flight; one was a demonstration flight for NASA; three times the spacecraft delivered cargo to the station; and one time the rocket blew up shortly after launch.
Orbital ATK is pursuing non-NASA customers for the Antares rocket, but the company has yet to officially sign any up. One reason is that the rocket has a relatively small, 3.9-meter payload fairing that restricts the size of what it can carry into space. And because Orbital ATK launches only from Wallops, the rocket cannot reach desirable polar orbits or geostationary transfer orbit.
The recent economic analysis of commercial cargo services explained the difference between a commercial success such as the Falcon 9 and a rocket only used by the US government: "Direct non-government use of a company product/service along these lines can eventually create easily traceable economic benefits that dwarf government expenditures, upfront or recurring. Achieving this easily traceable US economic benefit is mathematically impossible with a system developed and used only by the government."
Orbital ATK has also had difficulty sourcing engines for its rocket. The original Antares booster used refurbished NK-33 engines, which were manufactured about four decades ago. It is likely that flaws in the manufacturing of these engines caused the Antares rocket to explode 15 seconds after launch in October 2014 during a NASA supply mission.
Since that time, the company has changed engines, now using the modern, Russian-made RD-181 engines. The 42.5-meter-tall Antares 230 booster first flew in October 2016. Saturday's launch attempt will mark the second flight of the new Antares booster, now using a more modern Russian engine.
During the downtime after the 2014 accident, Orbital ATK contracted with United Launch Alliance for its Atlas V rocket to fly the Cygnus spacecraft into orbit. These missions went off without a hitch, but, like the Antares launch vehicle, the Atlas V rocket uses Russian engines rather than ones designed and manufactured in the United States.