THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510290074
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WALLOPS ISLAND LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
The Conestoga rocket that exploded over the Atlantic Monday night apparently received a bad internal signal and self-destructed, its developers said.
EER Systems officials are still trying to determine what caused the $20 million rocket to explode and expect to release a preliminary report Friday, said Jim Hengle, a vice president of the Seabrook, Md., aerospace firm. A final report should come out about two weeks later.
The five-story Conestoga blew up 46 seconds after liftoff from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. The state's first commercial rocket launch, five years in the making, was carrying a load of scientific experiments into space.
The rocket was on course when it received a bad control signal that was full of static, Hengle said. An onboard computer sensed the problem and ordered the Conestoga to self-destruct. NASA officials monitoring the launch also signaled the rocket to destroy itself, but only after the rocket had already done so.
``The noise distracted the rocket into thinking it was in a location other than where it was,'' Hengle said. ``It was fighting to stay on course, which it did until it ran out of hydraulic fuel.''
Rocket boosters did not malfunction, Hengle said, which had been suggested as a possible cause.
Hengle and his colleagues spent the week studying videos of the launch, the rocket's telemetry data and the piles of debris collected from the Atlantic Ocean and the beach at Assateague Island.
The Conestoga blew up over the Atlantic 14 miles off the coast at an altitude of about 10 miles. The spectacular explosion, which left behind coils of smoke, could be seen from Philadelphia to North Carolina. There were no injuries.
Company officials collected nearly two pickup truckloads of debris from the beach Tuesday. Hengle said they have found nothing unusual in the wreckage.
The Conestoga was EER Systems' first rocket. Its launch was delayed five times this summer because of either technical or weather problems before Monday.
Despite the explosion, the firm would like to design another rocket. It would take at least 18 months to build another launcher, Hengle said.
``We certainly would like to build another one,'' he said. ``And we intend to do so.'' by CNB