Failure to launch: NASA photos show massive rocket explosion in Virginia

Moments after it launched, the Orbital Antares spacecraft exploded, and fire and smoke billowed out from the resupply rocket bound for the International Space Station.

The destruction of the space vehicle sent out a deafening boom, and left people who were watching the disaster unfold from the press site running for cover or unable to turn away, according to eye-witness videos. The Oct. 28, 2014 rocket failure destroyed Orbital’s Cygnus spacecraft and halted the company’s cargo runs to the Space Station.

Orbital is set to resume flights to the station under a contract with NASA in December, but it won’t be using the Antares rocket. Instead, the company is buying rocket rides for its Cygnus onboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5.

NASA released an investigation report on the rocket crash, which didn’t find a “single technical root cause” for the explosion, according to an executive summary of the investigation. The agency did find that the rocket failure was caused by an explosion in a pump on an AJ-26 engine that powers the Antares, and the summary presents a few possible causes of the explosion, including the introduction of “foreign object debris” to the pump.

Agencies/Canadajournal