--- title: Gallery: Photos of NASA's Catastrophic Antares Launch description: Photos o fan unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket that exploded shortly after launching from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. canonical: https://time.com/4100035/nasa-antares-launch-photos-gallery/ author: TIME Photo article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-11-05T03:13:06.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:44:36.872Z article:section: Science og:title: See NASA's Photos of the Catastrophic Antares Rocket Launch og:description: Luckily, nobody was hurt. og:url: https://time.com/4100035/nasa-antares-launch-photos-gallery/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7c7aadcfc3023855/69886f98a988caddb16b5225/atk-launch-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2100 og:image:height: 1181 og:image:alt: ATK-Launch-1 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: See NASA's Photos of the Catastrophic Antares Rocket Launch twitter:description: Luckily, nobody was hurt. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7c7aadcfc3023855/69886f98a988caddb16b5225/atk-launch-1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # See NASA's Photos of Last Year's 'Catastrophic' Antares Rocket Launch > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is TIME's weekly climate and energy newsletter, written by senior correspondent Justin Worland. It connects the energy transition to the decisions reshaping business, technology, policy and markets. #### Where can I follow the energy transition as a business story? Future Proof covers climate and energy as an economic and business story rather than only an environmental one. It publishes every Friday and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes Future Proof? Justin Worland, a senior correspondent at TIME and an award-winning climate journalist, writes Future Proof. #### Is Future Proof free? Yes. Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=921b031b-285d-4f72-aa28-959b789497c7&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: A Year In Space - Ep. 5: Welcome Aboard [Watch (HLS stream): A Year In Space - Ep. 5: Welcome Aboard](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/w7OrO6vz.m3u8) (15:12)  _Published 2015-10-27. Watch astronauts board the International Space Station in the 5th episode of TIME's series 'A Year in Space'_ by [Lauren Jones](https://time.com/author/time-photo/) ## Lauren Jones Nov 5, 2015 3:13 AM UTC  Joel Kowsky—NASA by [Lauren Jones](https://time.com/author/time-photo/) ## Lauren Jones Nov 5, 2015 3:13 AM UTC On Oct. 28, 2014, an unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket exploded shortly after launching from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The flaming Antares rocket flopped back down to its launch pad, consuming its Cygnus spacecraft, carting 5,000 lb. of NASA cargo to the International Space Station, in an enormous fireball. NASA reported no injuries though described the crash as a “catastrophic anomaly.” Following the one year anniversary of the disaster, NASA has released photographs taken at the time by Joel Kowsky, a photo editor and photographer with the space agency in Washington D.C., of the stunning aftermath.  Joel Kowsky—NASA  Joel Kowsky—NASA  Joel Kowsky—NASA  Joel Kowsky—NASA  Joel Kowsky—NASA ## Transcript A corporal. It's something that no one with an income on the condition of the animals will become part of the human. But he doesn't trust that the government policies that are going now run by the federal state, a lot of private investors are not also supposed to contribute to the to a first opinion of what is not a minor failure in the number of of whatever the subsequent policies are not on. It is below the level of the empirical error. Yes, it did in a bit of a superior. By very severely eroded. There are no provisions support for. Aborted. Investment for many people, for renewables. Measure for the poor measure. I Philippine jewel, the Arabian automobile on this illegal is what does matter. The key. Player for this. In the companion population. We feel that our our lives without motor noise have ceased to exist the old way of the good with the three year old. You. You live here? Yes. There is a lot of money. I come on a lot of myself, you know. But I'm sure you your family. Oh, grandmother would be 30 years. Yeah, would. Okay. I see through your love life. Yet you've got a solution. We are working with you on your old two spacecraft. Trying to rendezvous in orbit is a little light target shooting from 10 million miles away. You're moving through millions of cubic miles of space with two relatively small spacecraft, and they have to come within inches of the precise docking point. It takes only 11 minutes to get from the launch pad and Baikonur up to low-Earth orbit, but it can take anywhere from 6 hours to two days to rendezvous with this space station. They use radar transponders. They use communications and computers. But ultimately, it's eyeball to eyeball. It's not easy to do the. Final approach towards the poison module getting confirmation. Of course, the antenna has been retracted under ten meters away. Contact and capture confirmed. The one year crew has arrived in the earthquake and. 41 seconds. They want to get it the. Comfort that it's up quickly. And that's the solution for need to look at groups, mostly private vineyard dust, plutonium loading. The United Scott. Kelly, Mikhail. Kornienko saying hello to their crewmates and hello to their home for the next 12 months in space. Our crewmembers now aboard the International Space Station. The mission. Little harder will break. Out of the. Usual that. Will. Hi, Dad. I'm Charlotte. How are. You? So much. It was. And beautiful. We love you. I love you guys. Do you go? You know, I often try to describe what this space station is like in the, you know, the engineering miracle that it is. I think of it more of a Navy vessel than it is a, you know, an aircraft or a spacecraft, for that matter. The ISIS is like no other job of building we've ever done. Merely getting your hardware to the construction site requires rocket ships. But it took over a hundred launches and over a hundred spacewalks to assemble. It's £1,000,000 over the size of a football field flying around the Earth, 17,500 miles an hour in a vacuum. And it works. The space station is like a lab and an outpost all rolled into one. So the space station has been continuously occupied since the first crew went up over 15 years ago. It's kind of amazing, too, that there are people all the time in space and they're going over our heads multiple times a day and we have no idea they're there. There's multiple what we call modules or parts to the space station. They look like big soda cans that are all linked together. But inside there have four flat surfaces. And unlike here on Earth, where you walk on the floor and you have walls and then you have a ceiling, when you're in space, it's all the same. It's like a five bedroom house. We've actually heard from crew members that they can lose somebody or lose track of where somebody is, and they actually have to go floating around to find where did that person get off to? It's that big. It's a huge facility. And so and six of us up there, we have plenty of space. We also have a little bit of a personal space, which is our crew quarters. It's about the size of an old phone booth. You sleep in there, it gets pretty dark when you close doors. The funny thing is, is they're all in a different orientation. One person standing up, one would be what you would think would be upside down. So it's very different from a earth feel to what you would think. And then we have another module which has our exercise equipment. It's kind of like the big gym up there. The one thing that we don't have is a shower. So when when they need to clean up, they're using wash clothes with soap and water, that kind of thing. So they need to sort of find a corner off by themselves to do to do things like that. Yeah, I actually have the perfect hair for space, which is none because I see my colleagues watching it and it looks quite the challenge. The hardest thing about using the space station as a laboratory is just that it takes so much of an engineering structure to keep it operating safely. You know, we have all of the life support system. The crew members have to recycle their own water and drink it, do all the cleanliness, have to do all of those things just to keep themselves alive in this harsh environment. And then on top of that, we want them to make discoveries and carry out experiments so they become the hands and the eyes and the ears for the scientists on the ground. See, we got some cream, spinach, asparagus and grilled chicken that's going to go on on 40. I haven't had the grilled chicken. It's I don't know what to expect. I don't remember the grilled chicken from last time. Go ahead, Samantha. Yeah, here's our table. It's a little messy looking, but very functional. And it's not parallel to the floor set a 45 degree angle because it can be and it saves space. So we put the hot sauce on the tortilla and actually, I'll put the chicken in there first. It's kind of sweat enough to stick my spoon up. Can't let the little droplets get too far. Surface tension is very important. If we didn't have surface tension in space, we'd be in big trouble in a lot of areas. Yeah. Oh, man, I'm not paying attention. Yeah, that's the issue of toilets. Do they know. That it's a danger of filming you eating dinner? You get the fancy stuff. Oh, I have a piece of chicken on a tortilla and some put some hot sauce here, which is made by a chef. Yep. And is good. Is is best before July 2016. This is probably best before July 2013. It was rehydrating my drink. Ready to go. You know, it was interesting seeing how the space station by and large does not look like it aged four years since I was here last. This is where I live now and I'll come home someday. But from my perspective, I live and work here. Now. I'm going to be here for a long time and as such I just kind of have to pace myself. Station This is Houston ACR. Thank you. 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