Antares rocket carrying Cygnus spacecraft explodes, October 28th 2014. The unmanned Orbital ATK Antares rocket, with the Cygnus spacecraft onboard suffered a catastrophic failure and exploded just after launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, USA. The Cygnus spacecraft was carrying supplies for the International Space Station, including science experiments, experiment hardware, spare parts, and crew provisions. Investigations indicated that the launch failure was caused by a fault in the liquid oxygen turbopump in one of the two AJ-26 rocket engines.