The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has determined that the first stage of its Atlas V rocket shut down prematurely on March 22 because of a problem in the first stage fuel system.   The rocket’s Centaur upper stage compensated for the first stage anomaly and placed Orbital ATK’s OA-6 Cygnus cargo spacecraft in the correct orbit, but ULA needs to determine what happened before conducting the next Atlas V launch.

In a statement today, ULA said that a review team “has been successful in isolating the anomaly to the first stage fuel system and it associated components.”   The team will “thoroughly assess all flight and operational data to determine root cause and identify appropriate corrective actions prior to future flights.”

The next Atlas V launch was scheduled for May 5, but ULA has already postponed it until at least May 12 while it investigates the anomaly.  That rocket will place the Navy’s fifth Mobile User Objective System (MUOS-5) communications satellite into orbit.

During the OA-6 launch, the Atlav V first stage shut down 6 seconds early.   The Centaur upper stage fired approximately 60 seconds longer than planned to compensate for the under performance and placed Cygnus into the proper orbit for its later rendezvous and berthing to the International Space Station, where it is today.    Thus, the launch was a “mission success.”   It was the 62nd Atlas V launch and the first to experience any problems.   Atlas Vs are powered by Russian RD-180 engines.

Orbital ATK was launching Cygnus on an Atlas V because it is still recovering from the launch failure of its Antares rocket in October 2014 that destroyed an earlier Cygnus spacecraft.  It purchased two Atlas V launches from ULA so it could fulfill its contractual commitments to NASA to send 20 tons of cargo to the ISS by the end of 2016.  This was the second of the two, although Orbital ATK says that future Cygnus spacecraft also could be launched on Atlas Vs depending on NASA’s needs.

Antares also uses Russian rocket engines.  The original version that failed in 2014 used NK-33 engines built four decades ago and refurbished in the United States by Aerojet Rocketdyne and redesignated AJ-26.  Orbital ATK is “re-engining” Antares, replacing the NK-33/AJ-26 engines with new Russian RD-181s.  A hot fire test of the first RD-181 powered Antares is expected in May, with Antares launching the next Cygnus in June or July, according to comments by NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden at a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council this morning.

Orbital ATK will launch its next cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) tonight aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, FL.  It is just one of three cargo ships heading to ISS in the very near future – a Russian Progress will launch next week and then a SpaceX Dragon the week after that. [UPDATE, MARCH 22, 11:35 pm EDT:  The launch took place at 11:05 pm EDT as planned.  All went well and Cygnus is now in orbit.  Arrival at ISS expected Saturday morning EDT.] [UPDATE MARCH 25, 2:25 pm EDT:  The Atlas V first stage underperformed during the launch.  ULA is investigating.]

The abundance of supplies enroute to the six-member crew reflects both the ongoing needs to supply the outpost – an important consideration when planning for trips further from Earth – and the need to catch up after failures grounded each of the systems in 2014 and 2015.

The Cygnus flight tonight (March 22 Eastern Daylight Time; March 23 GMT) is the second Orbital ATK Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) mission since its Antares rocket exploded 15 seconds after launch in October 2014.    Antares is being “re-engined” with different Russian rocket engines (RD-181s) and is expected to return to flight this summer from its launch site at Wallops Island, VA.  That launch was before Orbital Sciences Corporation merged with ATK and was designated Orb-3 — Orbital’s third operational cargo flight to the ISS. 

In the meantime, Orbital ATK arranged to launch two Cygnus spacecraft on ULA’s Atlas V, which launches to the ISS from Cape Canaveral.  The first was in December 2015 and designated OA-4 (for Orbital ATK-4).  The second is tonight.

Orbital ATK Space Systems Group President Frank Culbertson said yesterday that although the original agreement with ULA was for only these two flights, it may use additional Atlas V rockets in the future depending on NASA’s needs.   NASA recently awarded a second round of CRS contracts and Culbertson said that Orbital ATK offered both Antares- and Atlas V-launched missions.  “It’s really up to NASA in terms of what types of missions they order in the future under the new contract….  We’ve offered both … and it depends on what they need …. We’re prepared to do both.”

The Atlas V capabilities offer more flexibility, for example a 30-minute launch window instead of an instantaneous launch window.  

Tonight’s window to launch OA-6 (Orbital ATK-6, skipping over OA-5, which will be the return-to-flight mission for Antares) opens at 11:05 pm EDT.  Bill Harwood of CBS News tweeted the precise launch time options (all in EDT).

A5/OA6: There are 5 launch opportunities during the 26-min 52-sec launch window:

11:05:52pm
11:13:22pm
11:20:52pm
11:25:14pm
11:32:44pm

— William Harwood (@cbs_spacenews) March 22, 2016 

NASA TV coverage of the launch begins at 10:00 pm EDT.  ULA will also have a live webcast.

Orbital ATK names its Cygnus spacecraft after prominent individuals in the space industry who have passed away.  This one is named the S.S. Rick Husband after the commander of the 2003 space shuttle Columbia mission.  He and six others perished during reentry.   Husband also was the pilot of the first space shuttle to dock with the  ISS in 1999 (STS-96) during its earliest stage of construction.

This is an enhanced version of the Cygnus spacecraft and is carrying
7,900 pounds (3,600 kilograms) of supplies, equipment, and scientific
experiments to the six-person ISS crew.  Three of those six crew members
just arrived four days ago aboard Soyuz TMA-20M.

The pace of operations at the ISS is rather intense right now, starting with the Soyuz TMA-20M launch and arrival on March 18; this OA-6 launch tonight, with arrival at ISS on March 26; launch of Russia’s Progress MS-02 on March 31 with docking on April 2; and launch of SpaceX’s CRS-8 (SpX-8) Dragon mission on April 8 and arrival on April 10.  (All dates are EDT.) 

The SpX-8 launch is the first SpaceX mission to ISS since its SpX-7 mission ended in failure in June 2015 because of a second-stage problem on the Falcon 9 rocket.  SpaceX has successfully launched three Falcon 9’s since then, but this will be the first to ISS.

Russia also suffered a launch failure of one of its Progress resupply missions in April 2015.   Three Progresses have been successfully launched to ISS since then and a new version of the spacecraft, Progress MS, was introduced on the most recent launch in December 2015.  The launch on March 31 is the second (Progress MS-02) of this version of the venerable space station cargo resupply spacecraft that has been in use since 1978 initially for Soviet/Russian space stations and now for ISS. 

Orbital ATK’s OA-6 Cygnus is expected to remain at the ISS for 55 days, meaning that it will still be there when SpX-8 arrives.  This will be the first time both U.S. space station cargo companies will have their vehicles berthed to ISS at the same time.  ISS Operations Integration Manager Kenny Todd noted yesterday that it will be very important that the ISS crew pays attention to what is loaded into which vehicle at the end of their missions:  “We’ll have to get creative in terms of making sure that we don’t put the wrong things in the wrong vehicles when they get ready to leave… because we’re going to be moving a lot of cargo through hatches.”

Dragon is designed to return to Earth and land in the Pacific Ocean, bringing back scientific experiments and other high-value cargo.  By contrast, like all the other cargo ships that supply the ISS, Cygnus burns up on reentry and therefore is filled with trash – a less glamorous, but equally indispensable task.

In this case, not only will Cygnus be burning up on the outside, but on the inside as well.  Scientists will use it to test how fire behaves in microgravity.  The Spacecraft Fire Experiment-1 (SAFFIRE-1) will intentionally start a fire in Cygnus after it leaves the ISS. Instruments inside Cygnus will measure flame growth, oxygen use, and other characteristics.

Republicans and Democrats on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee set aside their sharp partisan differences on other issues today and vowed to ensure that NASA receives the funding it needs to execute the programs Congress funded generously for FY2016.  While the hearing before the Space Subcommittee was not free of partisan barbs, overall it was used to praise NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden and champion NASA’s space and aeronautics programs.

The President’s FY2017 request for NASA’s appropriated funding is $18.262 billion, about a $1 billion cut from the $19.285 billion Congress appropriated for FY2016.  It is displayed in NASA budget documents as a $19.025 billion request because it assumes $664 million will be moved from the “mandatory” side of the nation’s budget ledger into the “discretionary” account where NASA is funded, plus $100 million from a tax President Obama wants to levy on oil companies for a 21st Century Clean Transportation System initiative.

Space subcommittee chairman Brian Babin (R-TX) tried to explain to Bolden the consequences of attempting to use money from mandatory spending — the part of the budget that pays for Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the national debt, for example — but Bolden pleaded that he is not a “budgeteer” and the difference between mandatory and discretionary spending is beyond his grasp.   What matters to him, he said, is that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) assured him that the request for NASA is $19.025 billion.   He added that if he had realized how generous Congress was going to be in FY2016 — the appropriation was $756 million above the President’s request — he would have asked for more in his negotiations with OMB.

Regardless of what the President requested, the Senate and House appropriations subcommittees that fund NASA, and this subcommittee, have all vowed to ensure that NASA gets the money it needs to proceed with the Space Launch System (SLS), Orion spacecraft, a robust planetary science program, and the other priorities Congress delineated for FY2016.   This committee is an authorizing committee that provides policy guidance and recommends funding levels, but actual funding is provided by appropriations committees.  (Its Senate counterpart, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, has not yet held a hearing on this budget request.)

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), the top Democrat on the full committee, and Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), the top Democrat on the subcommittee, both expressed concern about NASA’s insistence that although it has committed to launching the first crewed mission of the Orion spacecraft, Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), in 2023, it has an internal date of 2021 it is striving to meet using extra funding that Congress provided.  NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) warned against such tactics in its most recent annual report.  It concludes that a 2021 launch date is unrealistic at the budget levels NASA projects and worries about the potential impact on safety if personnel feel pressure to meet the earlier schedule.  Bolden assured the subcommittee that safety is his first concern and he regularly interacts with ASAP.

Bolden is a former astronaut and a former member of ASAP.

For her part, Johnson assured Bolden that no matter who becomes the next President, Congress supports SLS (and Orion and commercial crew) so it is not necessary to make overly optimistic commitments now in order to get as much done as possible before the change in administrations.  Edwards asked Babin to hold a hearing specifically on the safety issue.

A partisan issue that did not escape the otherwise friendly spirit of the hearing today is NASA’s earth science program.  Full committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) complained that the request for earth science is more than the amount requested for astrophysics, the James Webb Space Telescope and heliophysics combined.   He and other Republicans insist that other government agencies should be funding earth science research while NASA focuses on human and robotic exploration of space.  Babin repeated assertions from earlier years that the funding for earth science is “disproportionate.”  

Congress has made clear in its appropriations bills that its priorities are SLS, Orion, and a robotic mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa.  Republicans and Democrats today criticized the President’s FY2017 budget requests for SLS and Orion, which are significant reductions from FY2016 levels.  Smith repeated what he has said at other hearings that the Obama Administration “continues to tie our astronauts’ feet to the ground.”  He also called the Administration’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM)  “uninspiring” and noted that NASA recently pushed out the date for launching the crewed portion of that mission until after the next President’s second term. 

NASA revealed earlier this month that it does not plan to launch the robotic part of ARM until 2021 and the crewed segment until 2026.

As for Europa, House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee chairman John Culberson (R-TX) is its leading advocate in Congress and has added significant amounts of money to NASA’s budget in the past three appropriations bills to force NASA to proceed with such a mission immediately even though NASA did not have it in its plans. Smith noted that the FY2017 request for Europa is a 90 percent reduction from the FY2016 funding level, which he called “incredibly disappointing.” 

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), who represents the district that includes NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), pressed NASA on which part of NASA is in charge of the Europa mission.  The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) operated for NASA under a contract with the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), is the acknowledged leader of the program.   Brooks challenged that, however, insisting that FFRDCs — which are contractors, not government entities — are precluded from serving as program managers.   Bolden replied that he would check on the law regarding FFRDCs, but noted that JPL has been the program lead on many NASA planetary science missions. 

MSFC advocates in Congress have successfully drawn NASA headquarters into assigning the program lead role on some science missions (including the Hubble Space Telescope) to MSFC, but preliminary work on Europa’s mission design has been done at JPL.

Meanwhile, Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), continued his quest to get NASA to agree to send people to Mars in 2033.  He has a bumper sticker that says “2033 — We Can Do This” with a picture of Mars in the corner.   He and Smith authored an op-ed in the Denver Post last week advocating for the mission, which would take place during a planetary alignment where a round trip would require 18 months instead of 2-3 years.  Bolden praised the op-ed and Perlmutter’s “we can do it” bumper sticker.  The public does not hear often enough what we can do, Bolden said, only what we cannot.  “To have a Member of Congress who has a bumper sticker that says ‘we can do this.’ … The American public doesn’t see that enough. …  What young people … see and hear all the time is ‘we can’t do this, we are not a great nation.’ … That’s just bunk. We’re the greatest nation in the world….” 

Bolden has said at each of his budget hearings before Congress this
year that it is “likely” his last since a new President will take office
before the next budget is submitted.  The NASA Administrator is a
political position and usually, though not always, the Administrator
departs when the President’s term ends.  Today, Republicans and Democrats both praised Bolden’s service to the nation as a Marine and as NASA Administrator.  Bolden rose to the rank of Major General in the Marine Corps before retiring.  He has served as NASA Administrator since 2009.