As SpaceX gears up for its first supply mission to the International Space Station, its closest competitor in the commercial resupply business isn’t far behind. On the morning of October 1, Orbital Sciences Corporation rolled its Antares rocket out to the launch pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. Over the next several months, Orbital plans a hot-fire test of the Antares first stage, the maiden flight of an Antares rocket, and a cargo delivery demonstration mission to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, which it hopes to complete before the end of the year.
![A trajectory analysis that used a computational fluid dynamics approach to determine the likely position and velocity histories of the foam (Credits: NASA Ref [1] p61).](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/fluid-dynamics-trajectory-analysis-50x50.jpg)
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