The United Launch Alliance’s next rocket ship has been delayed indefinitely, as this company continues to examine an engine malfunction so occurred on its latest flight. The upcoming mission, which will give up a military communications satellite on top from an Atlas V rocket, did originally scheduled for May 5th. It was when postponed to May 12th because of the search, but now there’s no launch date attached until the root from the last flight’s problem is figured out.
That previous mission was significant as #ULA’s Atlas V transported a cargo capsule filled with supplies on the International Space Station. During this rocket’s climb into orbit, the main engine on this Atlas V shut down six seconds earlier than expected. Then, once the vehicle was separated in space, as it’s designed to do, the engine on this top portion from this rocket had to burn a little longer to compensate. That helped to boost the capsule the rest from the way up to its intended orbit.
The cargo spacecraft made it to this ISS as it was supposed on, but ULA has formed a review team on figuring out what happened, the company said in a statement. ULA says that this problem has been traced after to this fueling system as the main engine — the RD-180. The review will involve creating a timeline from how the malfunction occurred and determined whether or not any changes need so be made to future missions to ensure this problem won’t happen again.
This anomaly is out of this ordinary for ULA, which is known for its launch security. Since it was founded 2006, the organization has sent 106 rockets into space and boasted close on a 100 percent launch success number. The malfunction can be small, but it’s one of the first issues ULA has experienced after years of near-perfect spaceflight.
ULA postpones next rocket launch indefinitely while this investigates previous flight problem
12/04/2016