Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Russia Lost a $45 Million Satellite Because 'They Didn't Get the Coordinates Right' (gizmodo.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the good-enough-for-government-work dept.

Last month, Russia lost contact with a 6,062-pound, $45 million satellite. Turns out, that happened because the Meteor-M weather satellite was programmed with the wrong coordinates. Gizmodo reports: On Wednesday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told the Rossiya 24 state TV channel that a human error was responsible for the screw-up, according to Reuters. While the Meteor-M launched last month from the Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East, it was reportedly programmed with take-off coordinates for the Baikonur cosmodrome, which is located in southern Kazakhstan. "The rocket was really programmed as if it was taking off from Baikonur," Rogozin said. "They didn't get the coordinates right." And the rocket had some precious cargo on board: "18 smaller satellites belonging to scientific, research and commercial companies from Russia, Norway, Sweden, the U.S., Japan, Canada and Germany," Reuters reported.

3 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Re:GPS maybe? by dcrisp · · Score: 5, Informative

    Civilian GPS equipment is actually designed to cut out above a certain velocity and altitude. Generally the velocities and altitudes involved in weapons delivery applications. This is, of course, designed to prevent somebody building an ultra cheap Balistic Missile guided by GPS OR an ultra fast rocket propelled missile guided by GPS. Go too fast OR too high and your guidance goes from accurate to estimate to guesstimate to "ooh, look at the flowers"

  2. At least we don't do this... by neoRUR · · Score: 5, Informative

    These kinds of errors are not just related to Russia.

    Mars Climate Orbiter probe lost due to Math error:
    English to Metric math conversion error
    https://edition.cnn.com/TECH/s...
    https://mars.nasa.gov/msp98/ne...
    http://articles.latimes.com/19...

    ExoMars Schiaparelli lander crashed due to failure to recognize the proper height.
    http://spaceflight101.com/exom...
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/b...

  3. Re:GPS maybe? by zwarte+piet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My old tomtom worked fine when I stuck it to a passenger window of a 737 and showed me we were going around 900km/h. It didn't take much longer to find the satelites. (but I had to delete any routes and turn off the speed camera warnings, cause it couldn't keep up with that)