NASA destroys rocket after failed launch

Nasa's rocket off course is destroyed:

From Source:

www.nasa.gov...

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. -- An Alliant Tech Systems suborbital rocket carrying two NASA hypersonic experiments was destroyed shortly after liftoff from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia Friday. No injuries or property damage were immediately reported.

The article doesn't say that NASA destroyed the rocket; only that it was destroyed, and the cause was unknown. Most likely, it just exploded, as rockets sometimes do.

Pity, though, I'd have liked to see the results of their hypersonic tests.

I was just going to post this myself. Good thing that i looked.

Funny how the rocket was " carrying a pair of research satellites". It just makes me wonder with all of the tension in the world these days, NASA is launching "research" sats.

Come on now!

I think that it's much more likely to have been a pair of photo-recon birds that were lost but they can't say that in an official statement.

Smell a familiar stench here.

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


It does not say it was NASA who destroyed the rocket, but it says "range safety officials", whatever that may be.

Originally posted by wolf241e
Funny how the rocket was " carrying a pair of research satellites". It just makes me wonder with all of the tension in the world these days, NASA is launching "research" sats.

They were not satellites, and they couldn't be, if the rocket was suborbital it could not put things like satellites in orbit.

They say "two NASA hypersonic experiments", not satellites.

reply to post by ArMaP


Yeah those are the people at NASA in charge of these kinds of things.

All launch systems are equipped with a self destruct, for a simple reason: what if one of the things goes off-course and starts heading for a city?

So if a rocket starts going seriously off course, they blow it up.

There is a more detailed story on Space.com as well as video of the launch attempt.

More info on the payloads:

The launch marked the first and only flight of the ALV-X1, a rocket ATK built and paid for to test various proprietary technologies Rominger declined to identify. NASA's Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition (HYBOLT) and the Sub-Orbital Aerodynamic Re-entry Experiment (SOAREX) payloads were on board the nearly 55-foot (17-meter) tall rocket.

The HYBOLT experiment, developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, was aimed at studying the effects of airflow and heating on hypersonic vehicles designed to fly at velocities faster than eight times the speed of sound.

NASA’s Ames Research Center in California designed the SOAREX experiment, which consisted of three separate probes that were expected to be released after HYBOLT was jettisoned, then plummet back toward Earth to evaluate new techniques for spacecraft reentry.

One of the three probes belonged to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and carried prototype receiver and transmitter for use in tracking objects in ocean recovery, NASA officials said. There are currently no launch-worthy spares for the experiments, they added.

[edit on 8/22/08 by xmotex]

reply to post by wolf241e


The National Reconnaissance Office launches intelligence satellites.

en.wikipedia.org...