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Astra 1K Communications Satellite now Space Junk
bachelor#3 writes "Astra 1K, which was to replace 3 other satellites, didn't make it. Launch services were being provided by International Launch Services. Here's a timeline, from T-minus 30 minutes onwards."
Seeing as it was made by Alcatel Space and Alcatel just axed another 10,000 jobs yesterday (or the day before?) Do you think it was a sign? I'm just a conspiracy nut.
(ddaadaataaday! wee! look at me, I'm waiting for my 2-minute-filter to wear! ladeedaa)
HURD - Hurd's Under Research & Development
"Both the satellite and the booster will after a while fall back to Earth. Both will burn with maybe small bits reaching the Earth's surface, depending on what materials the satellite was made of," Kreidenko said. "But there is no danger."
Just how sure are they that there is no danger? I'd rather not be hit by a 200mph pebble of debris...
Brevity is the soul of wit
-- Polonius
Thats nothing! Compare that to Iridium, which had 66 satellites that became space junk shortly after being launched. :-)
Every time we stick something up there in space (yes, this one didn't even make it that far), we put another obstacle in orbit for future generations to evade in their spaceshots. Likewise, we are detracting from the natural beauty of the skies by putting reflective crap like this up there.
When future generations look at the stars, do we want them to dream about soaring like gods to other planets, or do we want them to think that space is just a place we put all of our shit?
MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- Russia has failed to put a five-tonne European communications satellite properly into orbit and it will now circle uselessly until it eventually falls back to Earth, space officials said.
Nice, does that mean we will have another chance at free tacos from taco bell! ??
would help us all know why this is so important to the /. community
The French-made Astra satellite is the world's biggest communications satellite, with antennae spanning 37 metres. It was due to be used for radio and television broadcasts as well as for mobile telephone and Internet services in western Europe.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
If this was done by the same folks who handle the "Rich Bastards Go To Space" missions I am more then willing to contribute to Lance Bass ticket. Either that or my tasteless, N'Synch loving kid. Makes no difference which of them ends up stranded in orbit awaiting a painful reentry just so long as SOMEONE MAKES IT STOP! Anyone else have a buck to spare to ease my plight?
Karma: Anything remotely associated with Boy George I have no interest in.
The second failure in 25 launches. That's a success rate of 92%? That's also a 1 in 13 chance of failure with multi-million dollar equipment.
.. ...
T+plus 6 minutes. Second stage separation should have occurred, followed by third stage ignition. However, ILS has stopped its live commentary to show a video. We'll provide any additional information on the actual flight performance as it becomes available.
Problems started here maybe?
T+plus 8 minutes. Confirmation has now been received that the second stage engines shut down, the spent stage was jettisoned and the third stage has ignited. Also, the payload fairing enclosing the Astra 1K spacecraft atop the rocket has separated.
seems ok...
T+plus 10 minutes. The third stage burn should have been completed by now, followed by separation from the Block DM upper stage. However, no word has been received from ILS.
Looks like ILS noticed trouble brewing here and were trying to redeem the situation...
FAILURE. International Launch Services has announced that the second burn of the Block DM upper stage suffered an anomaly, failing to deliver the Astra 1K spacecraft into the proper orbit tonight.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
You can't even send a satelite to its orbit, and you're telling me that we landed on the thing called "moon"?!
This really is a job for Salvage 1 !
Hubble was at least fixable. What about Challenger and the whole unit conversion fiasco? Those were much worse problems--at least we could do something about Hubble and not waste the money getting it up there.
It's sad to see so much money and effort put into these satellites, only to have something go wrong and have it all for naught. It's too bad there isn't some way to recover the satellite or push it into its intended orbit. (I wonder what insurance policies are like on satellites, if they're even available.)
On the other hand, we have to remember that nothing is perfect in human endeavors. When this happens, the best we can do is learn from our mistakes and then move on. Certainly NASA is more careful about O-rings than they used to be.
--RJ
LOL
:)
We should just take all the nay-sayers and throw them off the edge of the earth.
The Flat Earth Society would gladly provide help. They are as anxious as we are to get rid of the crackpots
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
You see, it goes like this: Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
Oh sure... Nothing a couple hundred feet of rope and a "Satellite In Tow" sign won't fix.
Karma: Anything remotely associated with Boy George I have no interest in.
These are applicable statistics taken from: faa.gov
Table 5. Lifetime Vehicle Reliability Rates
Vehicle-----Launch Attempts----Reliability
Atlas 1 & 2------49---------------95.9%
Delta 2----------73---------------98.6%
Delta 3-----------1----------------0.0%
Ariane 4---------81---------------96.3%
Ariane 5----------2---------------50.0%
Proton----------254---------------89.4%
Soyuz-----------958---------------99.3%
Long March-------54---------------90.7%
(Source: STAR Database, October 14, 1998)
?sp
And if you don't return it I'll blow up the satelite; I swear!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Does anyone think there's a chance to recue this mission with the next several US shuttle launches in exchange for a mostly ready-made comms platform aboard the International Space Station? If yes, why? If no, why not? This could be a very valuable contribution to the ISS from the USSR, given their current difficulties otherwise, IMHO.
C|N>K
anyone find a cost on the 1k sat ? Surely it was ensured, but by whom and for how much.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
A Russian State Commission is being formed to determine the reasons for the anomaly.
If there's one thing the United States taught Russia right about our form of democracy, it's bureaucracy...
Why does this remind me of fsck?
C|N>K
Terminal velocity for whatever debris is leftover will not be that fast.. the odds of you being hit by it are extremely low.. the odds of you being seriously hurt if you were are even lower.
I'd like to see you do any better!
;-)
(old schoolyard retort that still makes no sense to me)
I keep reading that the projected failure rate, where failure==boom, for the space shuttle is one in 300. It some ways that's a low failure rate, in others a disturbing one. I don't have the math here, but what are the odds of going ten years without an accident?
The fairly successful but brief Apollo program had one lethal ground accident (#1) and one near inflight catastrophe (#13). That's still fewer than the half the deaths of Challenger.
Now, I know some smartass is going to tell me how much safer it is per mile to take a rocket to the Moon than to drive your car there.
I'm interested in the statistical projections for shuttle failures. The figure I've heard for catastrophic failure -- loss of vehicle and crew -- is around 1-in-300. Of course, lesser but nonetheless dramatic failures of the Apollo 13 sort are also a possibility. Finally, the shuttle fleet is getting old, and being a reusable craft the duty cycles might bring unpleasant surprises. Here's a recent article that made the rounds. (note the silver lining noted by the welder :)
If/when there is a failure, will the statisticians go, "Yup, that's about what we expected?" If the shuttle beats or falls short of its reliability prediction, does that make it a good or bad craft? I'm talking about perceptions here, not objectivity. It's a lot easier to be sober about failures of unmanned rockets.
It looks like we'll be talking seriously about what's going to replace the shuttle in just a few years. This could be good or bad for reliability -- while we've learned a lot, we have to admire the track record of the boring old Soyuz.
The shuttle can't reach geosynchronous orbit, which is where the satellite is supposed to be.
Seems like the problem is that they built a satellite too large to have any reasonable launch options. Or they could've gone to NASA and got one those Baaaadaaaaas Titan IV lifters. Probably would have cost more. Probably would be in orbit too.
Either you get smaller satellites and go to the Chinese, the French, heck even the Israelis to launch it or you go NASA.
Bizarre... our sigs... dude.... whoah
Burma?
I was on the edge of my seat till the end.
Someone will make a film of it I'm sure.
http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item= 1791768367
Is my pen cyberspace junk too because it is on eBay now?
Shame about that satelite. I guess Proton rockets from 1965 aren't the best thing to be using now. Classic cars are cool, but classic rockets are scary.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
New Scientist publishes a great news service for this sort of thing -- this earlier article discusses some additional dimensions of the accident and the possibility of rescue.
Not without a place to put his fulcrum he won't!
You can get satellite and launch insurance. I don't know what the terms are like, but I imagine that premium is fairly high. You can insure almost anything these days, it will just cost you.
Kreidenko said a secondary booster, which was due to propel the satellite to a higher altitude, had malfunctioned and was circling the earth separately from its payload.
This is a very funny way of saying, "the damn booster just broke off and flew away on its own."
With Iridium it is much cheaper to call phone-phone. Landline LD to an Iridium phone is abour $10/min. whereas Iridium to Iridium is about $1/min.
;)
With 10-10-220, you could talk up to 20 minutes, anywhere in the U.S. and to Canada for just 99. I'm sure Iridium serve some purpose, but not for city slickers.
That's what they call a malfunction? I imagine it's a pretty big deal that the booster stay attached to function properly. Sounds like someone forgot to use something better than velcro to attach the two.
About a year ago a European satellite had a partial booster failure, but eventually made it into the proper orbit anyhow because it had an ion engine that was powered via the solar panels.
Although not fast enough to be the primary final booster (may take years to get to right orbit), it can be a nice backup booster.
I wonder why they did not do that for this one? I suppose they figured the cost of the ion engine and related weight was greater than the projected risk of failure.
Table-ized A.I.
>1) The space shuttle fleet is fully booked for the foreseeable future, mostly on space station stuff.
Columbia is sitting at KSC without anything to do. It has one mission left on the books, then they're not sure what to do with it. It is too heavy to make it to the space station with any useful cargo.
However, it would still be highly inadvisable to go chasing this satellite for the rest of the reasons you mentioned. That third stage is essentially an undetonated bomb, poking and proding it during an EVA would be unwise.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
There's no use in having a comm satellite designed for geosynchronous orbit as a lawn ornament on the ISS.
A possible rescue mission would be to capture it with the space shuttle, attach a booster and transfer it to its intended orbit and orbital slot. I doubt it will be cost-effective, though.
BTW, it was insured.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
The Proton made it to Low Earth Orbit without any problem. The space station is at LEO. The problem occured with the Block DM upper stage rocket which was to take the satellite to Geosynch orbit.
> What I am now wondering is how anyone found out about this, and discovered the finer details.
SES, the company that would have operated the satellite, and Astra, the company that built the satellite, are normal western companies. International Launch Services markets the Proton launch vehicle, which is made by a Russian company and launched out of Kazakhstan. SES is a major client of International Launch Services.
Why wouldn't ILS divulge as much information as it could about this unfortunate incident? If that was your satellite, wouldn't you pound the table to make sure that you got the inside data?
Sheesh, this isn't the 60's, with shifty Russians lying to the west....
To quote "FAllen Angels" (Thanks Jerry P!) "It's all a matter of delta-v.".
Both the ISS (and currently Endeavor) are in low Earth orbit, as is the alleged satellite. Still, it ain't like you can just say "Houston, kin I borrow the keys to the shuttle tonight?". Besides, there aren't ANY gas stations up there for that baby.
I much prefer the solution that was used recently on a U.S. satellite that lost one of it's positioning motors. The engineers found that they could use an on-board electric motor to generate a magnetic field that would push against the Earth's magnetosphere....thereby turing the satellite. Bravo guys! And since it's powered by the solar cells, it'll last lot longer than the fuel supply for the original motor. Gee...we should build them ALL that way.
After all, the 1K needs only to reach a more elliptical orbit in order to start moving on out. Fire that puppy up and get it's batteries charged. Heck, considering the field strentgh needed, it would probably have to rotate and "flap" every antenna and panel it has. I can't escape the picture of that thing trying to "swim" it's way into orbit.....ah the irony...
Couldn't they add a "strong" parachute, very big one, so that if something fails (and it didn't explode) then the payload would slowly return to earth?
:)
Wouldn't that be a cheap solution to the X% of failures? You should only pray to your god so that it lands on firm land
unfinished: (adj.)
If somebody else went up and fixed it, who would own the satellite?
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
So how did NASA get those shuttles out to that rogue asteroid that was threatening all of Earth some years back?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Consider the tanker that went down off the coast of Spain. When that sucker sprang a leak, they hired salvors to try and save the ship and the cargo (this was before Spain and Portugal told them to get lost, whereupon they sunk in choppy seas.) Assuming that we had infrastructure in space, could we apply a similar idea and have space salvors recovering satellites? That would seem to me a better idea than keeping a 3 man crew in orbit on taxpayer dollars just to maintain the ISS, and the insurance company that insures the satellite would probably pony up a few mil just so they could avoid paying out on that particular policy.
Insurance is very expensive, yes indeed.
I know that American Mobile Satellite had insurance about, oh, 8 years ago for the launch. It was something like $60M. The bird was the size of a school bus from what I understand.
At the beginning of a project. You need to decide. Do we even want insurance? Do we feel lucky?
According to the Moscow Times: "Kreidenko said in a telephone interview that a glitch in the software that controls the DM-3 may have caused the failure."
Well, at least the russians don't get inches mixed up with centimeters like *some* space agencies have been known to...
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
They won't be able to do it during the current mission, but there is a precedent for a satellite rescue, I read about it yesterday. I don't remember the particulars, but the shuttle snagged a satellite that didn't reach its intended orbit, and the faulty booster module on it was replaced so it was able to reach said orbit.
Dunno if they'll be able to do that in this case since the way the article read, the launch vehicle was supposed to deliver yesterday's satellite all the way up to geosync orbit. I presume the onboard satellite booster is the engine we see on the satellites as they come spinning out of the shuttle cargo bay, so this bird might not have had one, nor a way to easily attach one.
~Philly
International regulations insist that anything that achieves orbit is given some form of designation. So we have a pretty good idea how how much stuff is up there.
The Soviets used a catch-all Kosmos designation for most of their failures. There are well over 2000 satellites in the Kosmos series, but this was complicated in that some Kosmos missions were genuine science, military or test vehicles, whilst others were probes and satellites that didn't get where they were meant to go.
To make things more complicated, the Soviets would often say that a Kosmos probe had completed its mission - even if had been DOA. Which made working out exactly what was working and what wasn't a complete nightmare for the West. No doubt the Kremlin loved these sorts of games.
To take just one example a 1964 Venus probe should have become a member of the Venera series; but it instead became the relatively anonymous Kosmos 27 after it failed to escape Earth orbit.
Once a probe was on its way out of orbit the Soviets usually then assigned it a proper mission name, although they complicated things by often using more than one name - so Zond (probe) was sometimes substituted for Mars or Venera!
Anything that failed to climb into orbit was usually not assigned a name and in Soviet days was rarely mentioned - just look at how successfully they covered up the N1 Moon rocket until after the collapse of Communism.
Nowadays the Russians are much more open, even to the extent of confirming military launches.
As for the cost? Who knows, so much of space expenditure is military I doubt we will ever find out. The Soviet programme was a crippling expense for their government and foolish attempts to match the Shuttle using the (admittedly far superior) Buran were one of the reasons for the final collapse of Communism.
Best wishes,
Mike.
It may be possible - it depends if the satellite is orbiting in an inclined orbit like the Shuttle or if it has been injected into an Equatorial orbit ready for transfer to geosynchronous orbit. If it is the latter then the Shuttle could not reach it.
The reason that they will not attempt it is that the Shuttle no longer has permission to handle commercial cargoes. These were all removed as an unnecessary risk following the Challenger disaster. If the Shuttle were to attempt a rendezvous (which it did do with a Hughes satellite that failed to achieve orbit), it would be approaching a satellite with a fully fueled booster. NASA wouldn't countenance sending men close to such a potential bomb.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Hubble was designed to be fixable. However, that in itself means a great cost. If you add up the cost of the service missions plus the extra costs in the original design, you find that you could launch a series of non-servicable Hubbles instead.
From The Toronto Star: Tuesday's failed launch followed an accident on Oct. 15, when a Russian unmanned Soyuz-U rocket blew up half a minute after liftoff. Space officials said later that an alien object was found in the rocket's fuel line.
;-)
Apparently, the Star, while reporting on this story, has let the cat out of the bag about a previous incident. I tried to submit it earlier yesterday but I guess it looked a little shrill. Not so hysterical now huh
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Oh, great. So every time a shuttle gets launched, that's another couple more spy satelites watching me. I feel safer already.
I wouldn't worry, a billion of your tax dollars are being 'well spent' carrying girders up to the ISS so that they'll have something to attach other girders to in the future.
When I put it like that the ISS sounds like a colossal waste of money. Perhaps I should mention all the really useful science going on up there - umm... err... ahem...
Still, I'm sure its a very nice girder - the Rolls Royce of girders, the sort of girder that Harrods would offer to their clientele should they be in the building trade.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Michael