Northrup Grumman announces partnership with Firefly Aerospace to provide Antares launch vehicles

According to an article in Wednesday’s Richmond Times Dispatch, with war shrouding suppliers in Ukraine and Russia, Northrop Grumman has found a new partner to supply the engines and first-stage assemblies for a new version of the Antares rocket to launch from the Wallops Flight Facility to resupply the International Space Station.

The Falls Church-based company announced the partnership with Firefly Aerospace on Monday, capping a search for a new supplier for the Antares program that began before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The invasion and subsequent U.S. sanctions cut off access to rocket engines from Russia and first-stage assemblies from a factory in Ukraine hit by cruise missiles last month.

But Northrop Grumman already was looking for components it could use in a broader range of space launches, including those linked to national security that can’t rely on Russian-made engines.

“Northrop Grumman and Firefly have been working on a combined strategy and technical development plant to meet current and future launch requirements,” said Scott Lehr, vice president and general manager for Northrop Grumman’s launch and missile defense systems.

The new Antares 330 rocket that the companies will develop will rely on the same type of fueling system now used for launches from the state-owned pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, a barrier island along the Atlantic Coast in Accomack County.

“We’re excited that they’re moving in that direction,” said Maj. Gen. Ted Mercer, CEO and Executive Director of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, known as Virginia Space, which operates the spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility.

After President Joe Biden imposed economic sanctions on Russia’s aerospace industry in March, Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said it no longer would permit sale of RD-181 rocket engines made by NPO Energomash to the United States.

At the same time, the Russian invasion imperiled the Ukrainian rocket design and manufacturing complex near Dnipro that makes the first-stage assemblies for the booster rocket to lift the Antares launch vehicle and Northrop Grumman-made Cygnus spacecraft into low-Earth orbit.

Russian cruise missiles struck the Yuzhnoye State Design Office and Yuzhmash Machine Building in mid-July, reportedly killing three people at the factory and a neighboring street.Northrop Grumman has rocket components for the next two scheduled resupply launches from Wallops, but it will have to rely on SpaceX to handle three subsequent launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida under a new contract with NASA that awarded six additional resupply missions to each company.

The Antares program has had to improvise before, after a rebuilt Russian engine exploded on liftoff in late 2014, causing $15 million in damage to the state-owned launch pad. The accident forced Orbital ATK, a Fairfax County aerospace company that merged with Northrop Grumman in 2018, to contract with United Launch Alliance to launch three resupply missions from Florida.

Antares returned to Wallops with a new engine for a successful launch in 2016, one of 14 from the regional spaceport.

In other Wallops Island related news, Thursday’s launch of the RockSatX student sounding rocket mission was once again canceled due to unacceptable weather in the Wallops area. Another next launch attempt will take place Thursday, Aug. 11, with the window opening at 5:30 p.m. EDT.

Source:   Richmond Times Dispatch/Virginia Public Access Project (vpap.org)

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