Videos of NASA/ATK Rocket Failure

By Nancy Atkinson - August 23, 2008 at 2:35 PM UTC | Missions

NASA launch officials were forced to hit the "destruct" button on an experimental rocket that launched early Friday morning. The launch and subsequent explosion was captured on both amateur and NASA video, and shows the pieces falling back to Earth.

The countdown and initial takeoff Friday morning from a NASA launch facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, went smoothly, said former astronaut Kent Rominger, a vice president in ATK's (Alliant Tech Systems) launch systems division. "Then (the rocket) appeared to veer south," he said. To the naked eye the flight didn't appear to be in trouble, he said, but it was moving off course.

The rocket was a little more than 2 miles high when it was destroyed. A team of officials from NASA and ATK are investigating the incident.

Here's the amateur video:

The rocket's planned flight wouldn't have taken it into orbit and was set to last about 11 minutes, with the rocket coming down far out in the Atlantic Ocean, said Bryce Hallowell, an ATK spokesman.

The NASA experiments lost aboard the flight had cost about $17 million total, a NASA spokeswoman said.

The rocket flight itself wasn't part of any government contract, but was an effort by ATK to develop capabilities for full-fledged launches of space vehicles. The project had been in development at ATK for two to three years with about 50 people working on it at some point in that time. A dollar figure for the rocket project wasn't released.

Officials said they do not know why it veered off course. It was destroyed to avoid endangering the public.

"I would be surprised if we don't know what happened fairly quickly," said Rominger.

Here's the NASA video:

Source:

Twin Cities.com

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com