NASA destroys rocket

NASA destroys rocket:

NASA had destroyed an unmanned experimental rocket carrying a pair of research satellites on Friday 22 August.
There were no fixed reports of properly damage, according to NASA, but the agency warned that debris from the explosion could be hazardous. NASA believes most of the wreckage fell into the Atlantic Ocean off the Virginia coast.

• Officials said it was a prototype made by Alliant Techsystems Inc and destroyed by a remote control. It was between 11,000 and 12,000 feet high when it exploded. It was destroyed to avoid imperiling the public.
  The Vice president of Advanced programs Kent Rominger said "I would be surprised if we don't know what happened fairly quickly".

NASA had paid $17 million for the 2 hypersonic flight research satellites. Rominger declined to put a value on the one-of-a-kind rocket, which he said was developed over the past few years to learn firsthand about launch vehicles and to test new technologies. The Minneapolis-based Alliant Techsystems Inc makes the solid-rocket boosters for NASA's space shuttles and is working with the space agency on its new moon rockets.
Rominger called Friday's accident "a very big disappointment but not a setback."

• "We knew the risks of launching payloads on a first-of-a-kind rocket," said Juan Alonso, director of NASA's fundamental aeronautics program.