Virginia's damaged launch pad could get $20 million from federal budget

The launch pad at Virginia's spaceport on Wallops Island that was damaged by a rocket explosion in October could get $20 million to fully fund needed repairs under a provision included in the proposed $1.1 trillion federal spending bill for fiscal year 2015.

Democratic senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine announced Thursday they'd sought the spending provision in an effort to help the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, known as MARS, "rebound" from that catastrophic launch failure. MARS is located at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore.

Virginia's Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne has estimated the damage to the facility at up to $20 million. But the spaceport is state-owned, and state officials have said they didn't know where that money would come from.

"The Wallops Flight Facility is a key asset to Virginia that will continue to play a major role in the future of NASA and space exploration," Warner and Kaine said in a joint statement on their funding efforts.

It was unclear at press time Thursday, however, if that spending bill would survive intact as Democrats objected to banking and campaign-finance provisions and Republicans faltered in getting the necessary votes to pass it.

The state built MARS to accommodate Dulles-based Orbital Sciences Corp.'s medium-lift Antares rocket after Orbital won a $1.9 billion commercial contract with NASA to resupply the International Space Station. State leaders hope to turn MARS into a major hub for the commercial space flight industry.

But on Orbital's third resupply mission on Oct. 28, the Antares' first-stage engine malfunctioned seconds after launch. The resulting explosion damaged the launch pad and its support facility. The Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority that oversees MARS has said it could take a year to complete the repairs. An official with the space authority couldn't be reached Thursday for comment on the spending provision.

Orbital said it expects to resume flights from Virginia using an upgraded Antares in 2016. Until then, it has secured an Atlas V rocket to make its next resupply mission from Cape Canaveral, Fla., toward the end of 2015.

Kaine and Warner said Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, head of the Appropriations Committee, has been key to their efforts so far. Mikulski has long been a supporter of NASA and the MARS facility.

If passed, the bipartisan federal spending plan would fund the government through next September.

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