Alliant test rocket flies astray, is destroyed

A prototype rocket built by Eden Prairie-based Alliant Techsystems Inc. flew about 16 degrees off course and was intentionally destroyed as a safety precaution shortly after its launch from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia early Friday.

No injuries have been reported, and NASA officials are warning the area's few nearby residents not to touch any debris found. Most of the debris is expected to have landed in the Atlantic Ocean, officials said.

More than $17 million of one-of-a-kind NASA hypersonic experiments were destroyed. During a press conference Friday morning, NASA officials said it wasn't known why the rocket veered off course to the south.

"NASA is very disappointed in this failure but has directed its focus on protecting public safety and conducting a comprehensive investigation to identify the root cause," said agency spokeswoman Beth Dickey. "NASA is assembling a multidiscipline team, along with the rocket's maker, Alliant Techsystems, of Salt Lake City, to begin the investigation promptly."

The prototype was Alliant's first stab at building an entire fully integrated rocket. Its team of 50 scientists and engineers designed the project over 2 1/2 years with an undisclosed amount of discretionary funds.

The rocket was managed by Alliant's space flight experts in Utah and built in its Elkton, Md., facility.

Alliant invited NASA to bring experiments on board at no cost because it was an experimental mission.

Alliant and NASA knew going in that the launch was experimental and could prove "challenging," Rominger said.

He said the mission required an unusual trajectory and was unique because of the positioning of its asymmetric load and "the hypersonic boundary layer data that they were trying to acquire."

"We flew a trajectory that anybody else stays away from. The dynamic pressures were sixfold of what space vehicles [normally] see," Rominger said.

Keith Koehler, spokesman for Wallops Flight Facility, said planners knew the risks associated with the launch. "But we were quite interested in the data that [were] going to be obtained for future developments," he said.

It is not yet known if the mission will be rebuilt and attempted again.

Alliant has built the rocket boosters for the space shuttle for more than 20 years and was recently awarded $1.8 billion in contracts to build the rocket boosters for NASA's next generation of shuttles, called Ares I and Ares V. The current shuttle is set to retire in 2010.