14 DAY TRIAL // As part of its commitment to usher in a new era of space exploration, the American space agency has just inaugurated the Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) at its Virginia-based Wallops Flight Facility.
The ceremony took place yesterday, March 22, when the ribbon was cut at the doors of the new structure. The goal of the HIF will be to provide support for medium-class space missions.
In other words, it is destined to be used by companies such as Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) and Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX). Both companies are building medium-class delivery systems.
OSC is currently developing its four-stage Taurus II rocket. The vehicle is related to the Taurus XL, which has a very poor track record at this point, having already lost two critical NASA climate satellites in just as many launches.
SpaceX is constructing Falcon 9, a rocket that has already flow successfully twice in 2010. The second flight saw it deploy the Dragon unmanned space capsule in low-Earth orbit, which was a tremendous success for the company
“With this state-of-the-art building, NASA demonstrates its commitment to the success of the nation's commercial launch industry,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said yesterday.
“We have already seen some fantastic progress and are looking forward to more this year. Wallops, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport and Orbital have been working together to bring the Taurus II vehicle to the launch pad this coming fall under tough mission schedules,” he added.
“That effort is impressive and a model we should emulate whenever possible,” Bolden argued. He added that OSC will operate at the HIF under the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services project and the Commercial Resupply Services contract.
The first Taurus II launch is expected later this year, so integration of the rocket will begin at Wallops this month. OSC needs to try as hard as it can not to botch this launch, given its record.
“Today is about bringing jobs, jobs and more jobs to the Lower Shore – jobs for today and jobs for tomorrow,” added the chairwoman of the Subcommittee for Commerce, Justice and Science, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski,
“I'm so happy to see our federal facilities like Wallops bringing the innovation economy to the community with this world-class international launch site that will soon launch science missions and take cargo to the International Space Station,” she said.