A key NASA official on Feb. 3 defended not requiring Orbital ATK [OA] to perform a full flight test of its re-engined Antares launch vehicle before performing its first Cargo Resupply Services (CRS) mission, saying the company’s potential consequences from a failure was sufficient for the agency to proceed without the test flight.
“That will be the end of their company, potentially, if they have a failure,” NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations William Gerstenmaier told sister publication Defense Daily Feb. 3 at the 19th Annual FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington. “That is the right share of risk.”
Orbital ATK is re-engining its Antares launch vehicle with Russian RD-181 engines. Company officials said in December that the company was “sure” it didn’t need a preliminary flight test of Antares with its new engine because the engine was “as close” to a drop-in replacement as the company could get. Orbital ATK originally planned to move away from Antares’ AJ-26 engine, but the September 2014 launch failure on Wallops Island, Va., accelerated those plans. The AJ-26, developed by Aerojet Rocketdyne [AJRD], is a refurbished NK-33 designed to launch the N1 Russian rocket on lunar missions.
A space industry official told sister publication Defense Daily in December that first flights of unproven rockets have higher failure rates than rockets that have already flown and that a new vehicle’s full-up, hot fire on a test stand would not be acceptable for commercial customers, unless they received a significant discount. Instead of a full flight test, Gerstenmaier said Orbital ATK and NASA will perform a large, long duration firing of the re-engined Antares. He said NASA and Orbital ATK will also run the “entire flight profile” through the ground test.
The re-engined Antares will first fly on a NASA Cargo Resupply Services (CRS) mission in the May-June timeframe. The re-engined Antares test fire was planned for Feb. 8, according to a NASA inspector general report from September. Messages left with Orbital ATK and the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority (VCSFA), which manages the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at Wallops Island, home to Antares, were not returned by press time Feb. 4.
Gerstenmaier said this no-test-launch approach is “very reasonable” for a cargo mission that is low value compared to high value missions like humans or satellites.
“We’re not doing this foolishly…we don’t gamble,” Gerstenmaier said. “We make sure we have understood and (that) the risk will be appropriate for what we’re going to fly.”
PAYMENT QUESTIONS
The NASA IG report was critical of Orbital ATK’s return to flight plan following the Antares failure and questioned NASA’s decision to bypass the flight test. NASA IG said although it is based on related technologies, the RD-181 is not identical to the RD-180 engine used on the Atlas V. The NASA IG said the NASA launch services program chief engineer cautioned against assuming similarity between the two engines as each combination of vehicle and engine creates unique interface characteristics. Orbital ATK originally wanted to obtain the RD-180, but was blocked by United Launch Alliance (ULA) from doing so.
NASA IG said NASA in 2008 awarded Orbital ATK $1.9 billion for eight CRS missions. NASA agreed to purchase a minimum of 20 metric tons of upmass to be delivered in eight missions between 2010 and 2015.
Orbital ATK performed two CRS missions prior to the September 2014 launch failure, known as the Orb-3 mission. In December 2014 and June 2015, NASA extended Orbital ATK’s contract into 2018, first adding one mission (Orb-8E) and then two more (Orb-9E and -10E). As of June 2015, Orbital ATK had successfully completed two CRS missions and received $1.6 billion, 84 percent of the original $1.9 billion fixed price contract awarded in 2008.
NASA IG said in addition to not taking advantage of contract provisions that could have saved the agency money, NASA continued to take financial risks by paying Orbital ATK for missions far in advance of actual flight. This was largely the result of Orbital ATK structuring its return to flight plan so that Orb-8, the most expensive planned mission on a price-per-kilogram basis, was canceled and its costs distributed over the remaining four flights. Consequently, NASA IG said the agency paid the company over $50 million after receiving credit for milestone payments already made on Orb-8 (40 percent of total mission costs) and after calculating the additional payments for milestones already completed on Orb-4 through Orb-7.
At the time the return to flight plan was approved, NASA IG said the agency had already paid Orbital ATK 70 percent of the total mission costs for Orb-4. If that mission had been canceled, the associated funding would have been a credit applied toward milestones already completed for Orb-5 through Orb-8. Under this scenario, NASA would not have owed any payments to Orbital ATK in June, but instead would have had a credit balance of approximately $30 million to apply to future mission milestones.
TEST FIRE QUESTIONS
NASA IG cited four reasons for its criticism of Orbital ATK’s return to flight plan: Although the Atlas V that Orbital ATK contracted to use while Antares was out has a strong flight record and is a suitable rocket for the company’s next CRS mission, Orbital ATK was to integrate its Cygnus capsule with the Atlas V for the first time. Orbital ATK, Cygnus and the Atlas V successfully performed the Orb-4 CRS mission on Dec. 6.
Another reason NASA IG cited for its criticism was that Orbital ATK had to accelerate its development of the re-engined Antares, refitting it with new engines for two planned launches in 2016. This tight schedule, NASA IG said, did not include a test flight and provided limited opportunities for qualification and certification testing. A third reason was although NASA increased monitoring of Orbital ATK’s milestone plan and RD-181 engine testing for the re-engined Antares, the agency had not conducted detailed independent technical assessments of the modified system and the associated qualification testing results.
Finally, NASA IG said it believed Orbital ATK’s return to flight proposal, agreed to by NASA, to drop one of its five planned CRS flights and carry the promised cargo in four missions, may disadvantage NASA by decreasing the agency’s flexibility in choosing the type and size of cargo that Orbital ATK delivers to ISS. Despite NASA’s concerns, the IG said the agency had not, as of September, fully utilized provisions in the CRS contract that would allow it to increase monitoring and oversight through a detailed independent technical assessment of the company’s efforts to fulfill its contract obligations.
Prior to using the RD-181, NASA IG said Orbital ATK must modify the Antares first stage structure, steering mechanisms, fuel tanks and lines and flight control software to accommodate the new engine. In past audits of spaceflight programs, NASA IG found project managers are often overly optimistic about the effort required to modify heritage technologies–in this case, incorporating the RD-181 engines into Antares–and underestimate the time needed to address known and unknown risks by assuming that most risks will not materialize. The inspector general said in 2012, NASA conducted a detailed technical assessment of the AJ-26 engine Orbital ATK used in its original Antares configuration and identified the risk that the engine had not been rigorously tested in “test-like-you-fly” conditions.
NASA IG said, specifically, NASA determined the configuration and operation of the AJ-26 engine was substantially different from the NK-33 engine on which it was based. In addition, limited test data was available at the thrust level used in the AJ-26 engines, and combining two of the AJ-26s into the original Antares first stage further increased the need for a “test-like-you-fly” approach.
Ultimately, after consulting with Orbital ATK, NASA accepted the heightened risks associated with the engines and proceeded with the company’s flight plan. The NASA independent review team investigating the Antares failure came up with three credible technical root causes, though it was unable to isolate a single technical root cause. One was inadequate design robustness of the AJ-26 liquid oxygen hydraulic balance assembly and turbine-end bearing for Antares, another was foreign object debris introduction into the liquid oxygen turbopump and a third was manufacturing or other workmanship defect in the liquid oxygen turbopump.
NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz in January also defended the agency’s decision to allow Orbital ATK to bypass the full flight test. She said Orbital ATK is on track to conduct a full “flight-like” test fire of the RD-181 engines at 100 percent. Schierholz said a full test fire is an industry standard for a new launch vehicle and is the same method NASA is using with the cores stage that will be used for the Space Launch System (SLS) on its first flight.
Schierholz also defended NASA’s contracted payment method with Orbital ATK for CRS. She said the CRS contracts are structured with milestone payments to incentivize the contractor to provide a successful launch service and that the agency’s approach to this mission is consistent with NASA policy for “payload criticality.”
The Atlas V is developed by ULA, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA].