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OA-5 was the “return-to-flight” mission of Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket after an Aerojet Rocketdyne turbopump on an Antares 130 vehicle failed on October 28, 2014, destroying the rocket, spacecraft, and damaging the launch pad. The upgraded Antares 230 vehicle flew with a different Russian engine (an RD-181 instead of the 40-year-old AJ26/NK-33). The Cygnus cargo vehicle, which successfully flew cargo and supplies to the International Space Station, was named S.S. Alan Poindexter in honor of a former NASA Shuttle astronaut who passed away in 2012. The spacecraft was also used as an experiment site for testing fire propagation in space before reentering the atmosphere. OA-5 launched from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s Pad 0A at Wallops Island, Virginia on October 17, 2016. Photos courtesy: Mark Usciak, Jason Rhian, Charles Twine, Jared Haworth
