One of the sources familiar with the probe said investigators found particles of a crystallized desiccant, or drying agent, in the turbo pump and other parts of the AJ-26 engine. He also declined to comment on the cause of the May test stand failure, which is part of the investigation. Glenn Mahone, spokesman for Aerojet Rocketdyne, declined to comment on the investigations, noting that they were still underway. Several sources said it may be difficult to determine conclusively whether the debris entered the engine before the explosion, or as a result of it. Probes of past accidents have had similar results. One source said the Orbital investigation could end without declaring a single "root cause" for the explosion. The new findings could also open the door for a legal claim against Orbital by GenCorp, which took a $17.5 million loss in October, after Orbital said the accident had prompted it to accelerate plans to switch to a different engine. If the investigations confirm that debris from the fuel tanks caused the Antares explosion, that could have significant financial and legal effects for Orbital ATK, which was formed by the merger of Orbital Sciences Corp and Alliant Techsystems. She agreed with Orbital that foreign object debris was always considered as a possible cause in aerospace accidents. Nasa spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz said Nasa was conducting its own internal "lessons learned" review of the accident, but declined to give any details about individual aspects of the investigation. Orbital also successfully launched one Antares rocket in July 2014, after the May incident.
No details have been released on the May 2014 test stand incident, but sources familiar with the earlier investigation said it was likely linked to faulty "workmanship" on the original motor, and additional inspections had been mandated to prevent mishaps with other engines. He said Orbital continued to compare data from the October explosion with a May 2014 test stand failure of a different AJ-26 engine, and prior failures involving AJ-26 ground tests in 2009, 20. Orbital spokesman Barry Beneski said the company-led "accident investigation board," which includes officials from Nasa and the Federal Aviation Administration, had not identified any evidence of mishandling of the flight hardware by Orbital. Orbital ATK on Friday acknowledged that so-called "foreign object debris" was one of more than a half dozen credible causes of the explosion, but said it was not "a leading candidate as the most probable cause of the failure." GenCorp Inc's Aerojet Rocketdyne unit refurbishes the old motors and resells them as AJ-26 motors. Orbital initially linked the explosion to a problem with the turbo pump in one of the two Soviet-era NK-33 engines that power the rocket. The sources said the preliminary findings suggest that a simple assembly mistake by Orbital ATK could have caused the explosion, which destroyed a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station. Last October's explosion of Orbital ATK Inc's Antares rocket may have been triggered when debris inadvertently left in a fuel tank traveled into the booster's main engine, two people familiar with investigations into the accident told Reuters.
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