A NASA facility will be lifted from obscurity on Wednesday April 17, with Orbital Sciences Corp. conducting an initial test launch of its Antares rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia.
The Orbital Sciences mission is one of two planned to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. If successfull, Orbital Sciences Corp. will have demonstrated its reliability in its contract with NASA. Through the $1.9 billion contract, Orbital will engage in eight unmanned cargo missions to the station using the Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule.
Aside from testing the Antares rocket's worth, the test launch also puts Wallops Island on the map, potentially transitioning it to a key player in the NASA space program. More than 16,000 rockets have been launched from Wallops Island since 1945 but most of those rockets were suborbital and were conducted for educational or research purposes. Unlike other NASA facilities, the Wallops Flight Facility is relatively small. Located near Maryland south of Chincoteague Island, the site is bordered by marshland and the Atlantic Ocean.
"The real transformation here at Wallops is we've always been kind of a research facility," facility director William Wrobel said. "So this transition is really kind of into an operational phase, where we're going to be doing kind of regular flights out of here to the space station."
Orbital Sciences Corp was awarded its ISS delivery contract in 2008. Its competitor in the ISS supply arena is SpaceX, the company founded by billionaire Elon Musk. Orbital's Cygnus capsule faces a disadvantage to SpaceX's Dragon capsule in that Cygnus burns up upon reentry, whereas Dragon can return supplies intact.
"The fact is, there is not that much cargo valuable enough to warrant the additional cost that's inevitable when you try to return something," Orbital spokesman Barron Beneski said. "It's a demand question. How much return cargo is there and does NASA need to order a Cygnus that can return cargo in addition to what the SpaceX capsule does?"
The launch is seen as a victory for Virginia over Florida, where so many NASA launches have taken place. According to Beneski, however, the Wallops facility has its advantages, including the fact that it is smaller and less busy. Additionally, Virginia officials say the launch should help bring business to Wallops Island.
"This launch is going to be a real watershed event," executive director of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority Dale Nash said. "We are getting into the big time."
