ESA Cryosat Launch Reported Failure

hptux06 writes "Earlier today the ESA lauched their "Cryosat" satellite, designed to monitor ice levels across the Arctic/Antarctic. It's being reported a failure, disappearing 90 minutes after the launch. It cost £90M (160M US$) to build, and was supposed to spend three years determining the effects of global warming." From the article: "The satellite rode into space on a Rockot vehicle, a converted SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile. The rocket, which in the Cold War would have been armed with nuclear weapons, had been modified for peaceful space duties with the addition of a Breeze-KM upper stage. Dr Matthias Oehm, chief executive officer of Eurockot, said they had not received the expected signals from either the spacecraft or the upper stage of the rocket that should have injected it into orbit. "

Comments

Re:Global Warming Myth

[Anonymous Coward]

gaining karma == appealing to Slashdot liberal groupthink.

No thanks. I will take freedom of inquiry over appealing to the crowd any day.

Thus another spy sattalite is born

[Ethek]

This wouldn't be the first time a launched satellite has been 'lost' on purpose.

third?

[eagl]

Isn't that the third converted Russian ICBM to have a launch failure? The launch price discount compared to other launch systems means nothing if it can't put the payload into the correct orbit. The other one I remember was that solar sail experiment, but I was sure there was at least one more that used one of these missile conversions that also failed to make orbit.

Re:Shrinking ice? On Earth or Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why that realclimate.org rubbish is even more irrelevant.. http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/10/dutch-journalism -award-kyoto-is-junk_06.html

$160 million down the drain again

[davek]

How many times have governments and obese space programs spend years and millions developing one thing, only to have it blow up in space because someone didn't convert feet to inches or forgot or because one tiny wire failed resulting in failure to launch a key component. There's so many different parts to these missions, and so many locations for human error, that it is totally impractical to assume a 100% success rate when putting things into space. Back in the age of the space race, money was being poured into space programs; more money means more time, which means more double-checking, which means less failue. We don't have that these days.

NASA, ESA, and other space programs are going about it all wrong. They're trying to adapt old designs and architectures of how to get into space to new technologies, and they just aren't fitting.

-dave

Re:It's a conspiracy...

[RayBender]

he was asked by one of his students what would have happened if the Soviet premier would have ordered a launch of these ICBMs. He replied "Nothing, maybe a few explosions within the silos, but not much more."

That's pretty interestinng, but I really have to wonder. After all, the Soyuz rockets have the highest reliability of any launch vehicle anywhere (and the highest number of launches). Though I agree, essentially all of the recent ex-military launches (including a solar sail a while back) have been failures.