Sun, Oct 09, 2005
Blow To European And Russian Space Programs
A European Space Agency
(ESA) designed to collect data on polar ice caps broke up in flight
Saturday after the booster system on the converted Russian
ballistic missile launch vehicle failed to ignite properly.
"The booster unit did not switch on and it resulted in the
failure of the satellite to reach orbit," said Russian Federal
Space Agency spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko to the Associated
Press. "The remnants of the satellite have fallen into the northern
Arctic Ocean."
Debris from the CryoSat satellite fell into the ocean, said
Davidenko.
The loss of CryoSat is a crippling blow to the ESA, which had
hoped to use the satellite in a three-year mapping project of polar
sea ice in an effort to determine the impact of global warming.
The incident also mars the reputation of the Russian space
agency, which has aggressively tried to move into the commercial
satellite launch business.
"According to preliminary information, it was not a failure of
the Space Forces, but the malfunction of the apparatus, which
failed in bringing the satellite to orbit," Davidenko said. He
added the head of the Khrunichev production company which
manufactured the booster had apologized to ESA officials for the
failure.
Engineers lost contact with the rocket and satellite two hours
after it lifted off from Russia's northern Plesetsk launch
facility, according to ESA spokesman Franco Bonacina. It was too
have reached orbit about 1 1/2 hours after launch.
"We're trying to figure out exactly what happened," Bonacina
said.
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