
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 25, 1995                   TAG: 9510250087
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ATLANTIC                                LENGTH: Medium

BITS OF FAILED ROCKET WASH ASHORE IN VA.

Searchers combed beaches along Virginia's Atlantic Coast Tuesday, picking up the debris from a five-story commercial rocket that exploded shortly after its launch Monday.

The $20 million Conestoga rocket, owned by EER Systems Corp. of Seabrook, Md., was destroyed about 45 seconds after liftoff from the Wallops Island Flight Facility along with its payload of 14 scientific experiments.

EER Systems has formed a team to find out what caused on-board computers to destroy the rocket, but the investigation will take weeks, company spokesman Mike Bryant said Tuesday.

The rocket self-destructed when the computers detected the craft breaking up, Bryant said.

The team plans to examine film and videos from cameras with telescopic lenses and analyze telemetry data the rocket radioed back to Earth, he said.

Debris rained into the Atlantic Ocean off Virginia's eastern shore and began washing up Tuesday along a 15-mile stretch of Assateague Island, a few miles north of Wallops Island, said NASA spokeswoman Betty Flowers.

``If we get parts back, we'll take a look at them,'' Bryant said. The company has no plan for divers to retrieve wreckage in the sea.

The Conestoga was the first orbital commercial rocked launched from the 50-year-old Wallops. It was intended to be the first orbital mission from the Virginia spaceport since 1985.

The failed flight will not diminish interest in commercial space ventures, and Wallops will remain an attractive launch site, said John Jerke, aerospace and transportation director for the Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon.

``The demand is not going to go away just because of one accident,'' he said.

Wallops is one of only three such spaceports in the United States. The others are Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., and Cape Canaveral, Fla., Jerke said.

The Conestoga launch had been postponed six times since the initial launch date in late July. A hydraulics problem in its steering system scrubbed an August launch with less than two minutes left in the countdown.

The experiments - sponsored by NASA, various universities and private companies - ranged from cancer research to the effects of extreme cold temperatures on commercial high-capacity heaters.

by CNB