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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"?!
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.
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
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
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...
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.
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."
Like, what are the chances of flipping heads 10 times in a row (maybe 1 in 500)? And I know I could figure that out, but I'm too lazy at the moment.
Oh come on! 2^10 is 1024! Every geek should know that! 1/1024 for 10 consecutive heads...
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.
>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.
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If somebody else went up and fixed it, who would own the satellite?
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
To be fair the causes of the N1 failures (4 out of 4) were varied. The N1 had been designed to cope with multiple engine failures and still achieve orbital velocity.
However, the death of Korolev - its designer, the appointment of the inexperienced Mishin and the ongoing wrangling between the Soviet design bureux (they had 3 Moon programmes running simulataneously) meant that the N1 was always a risk.
There were no full test facilities so they couldn't perform a static engine test, the budget was minimal and the deadlines insane - that they got anything was a near miracle. That they got such incredible engines (which are now being used in Atlas rockets) was a miracle.
For the record the N1 failures were caused by:
- An uncontained fire from a leaking fuel pipe which caused the computerised engine management system to shut down motors. The rocket lost thrust and was destroyed. The engineers increased the resilience of the piping to deal with resonances.
- An explosion in the liquid oxygen line to one engine after it ingested a fragment of welding slag. The failure itself was not critical, but the computers shut down the wrong engines, the rocket lost thrust and toppled back onto the launch pad, completely destroying the pad. The engineers improved welding techniques and fitted filters to piping.
- A failure in the attitude control system, the rocket tumbled in flight and was destroyed.
- A fire in the engine compartment which burned out of control. The rocket was destroyed from the ground, but was within seconds of achieving second stage ignition. It might well have made it to orbit had the controllers not intervened.
A fifth N1 was prepared for launch but the programme was cancelled on the direct orders of the Kremlin. America had won the race to the Moon and the Soviets were concentrating on space stations and a race to Mars.As for the N1 being unusually unreliable, not necessarily so. The Soviets were always much more willing to fire their rockets and pick through the wreckage to determine problems than those in the West. So it was clear that the N1 was being debugged in the same manner.
The Proton which launched the Astra satellite had a terrible record in its first few years. It is quite possible that the USSR could have sent men around the Moon in a Zond capsule before Apollo 8 - however, the mission was cancelled when the Proton booster developed cracks whilst sitting on the launch pad, (a problem that also delayed the N1).
Nowadays the Proton is a genuine star - old but very reliable.
a twin with an engine out IS very dangerous because of the risk of losing control authority to the working engine, or of shutting down the good engine in a panic.
Not just a theoretical risk either
Indeed (see the N1), or most tragically the Kegworth disaster here in the UK when the crew shut down the wrong engine of a British Midland 737. They had been dealing with an engine fire and trying to make an emergency landing at East Midlands Airport. For some reason, which has never been clear, both pilots came to the same conclusion which engine needed shutting down. They chose the wrong engine, the plane lost all power and crashed into the M1 motorway, 47 people died, amazingly 79 survived.
Best wishes,
Mike.
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.