Animaition of the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket at Wallops Island, Va.Dulles, Va-based Orbital Sciences Corporation is poised to carry out a key hot-fire test in May 2012 and then the inaugural flight of its "ANTARES" ROCKET in late June 2012, once the state of Virginia completes delayed work on a commercial launch pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Va., Chairman and CEO David Thompson told financial analysts in a conference call today, Feb. 21, 2012. In late August or early September, 2012 Orbital Sciences will launch the new Antares rocket with the Cygnus spacecraft on a mission to demonstrate the capacity of the commercial space launch firm to safely and reliably deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Orbital Senior Vice-President Frank Culberston recently gave a talk about the STATUS OF THE PLANS [PDF].Meanwhile, SpaceX of Hawthorne, California plans to launch a demonstration flight in late April, 2012 and the first cargo resupply flight in the summer of this year from a completed Cape Canveral, Florida launch pad.The two commercial space launch firms shared 3.5 million in NASA contracts for a combined twenty commercial cargo flights to the ISS, Orbital Sciences with eight and SpaceX with 12. More from SPACEFLIGHTNOW.
Credit: chupacabra-digest.blogspot.com
Credit: chupacabra-digest.blogspot.com
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