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Post Info TOPIC: CryoSat Launch


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RE: CryoSat Launch
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Due to a missing command from the onboard flight control system the main engine continued to operate until depletion of the remaining fuel.
As a consequence, the separation of the second stage from upper stage did not occur. Thus, the combined stack of the two stages and the CryoSat satellite fell into the nominal drop zone north of Greenland close to the North Pole into high seas with no consequences to populated areas
” - European Space Agency statement.

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Russian news reports indicate Cryosat did not reached its target orbit.
Problems arose before the rocket deployed the satellite at 1636 GMT after two burns of the Rockot's Breeze-KM upper stage. The first two stages of the rocket were to complete their role in the flight within the first five minutes after launch.
The Redu tracking site in Belgium was scheduled to acquire signals from the Breeze upper stage and Cryosat just before spacecraft separation however no signal was received.

"We have no information on what the status of the mission is" - Volker Liebig, ESA's Director of Earth Observation.

However, it seems that the satellite has broken up.

"We believe the satellite ... fell where the second rocket stage is supposed to fall, that is in the Lincoln Sea, near the North Pole" - Oleg Gromov, Russian Space Troops.

"The remnants of the satellite have fallen into the northern Arctic Sea. The booster unit did not switch on and it resulted in the failure of the satellite to reach orbit" - Vyacheslav Davydenko, spokesman for the Russian Federal Space Agency.

A commission to investigate the incident has already been appointed.

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Replay Launch (23.3Mb .mov file)

-- Edited by Blobrana at 17:46, 2005-10-08

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Launch!


The Kosmos-3M (11K65M) version is an upgrade of Kosmos-3 developed on the basis of M.K. Yangel R-14 (SS-5) medium range missile to which the second stage was added.



Credits: Eurockot

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The CryoSat spacecraft was successfully launched at 1502 GMT atop a Rockot booster from Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome.
The correct polar orbit at 750km will be attained in about 94 minutes.

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The £90m (135m euro) satellite is still on track to launch at 19:02 local time (16:02 BST) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia.


The satellite is tucked away inside its faring ready for blast off.
Credit ESA.


"The great difficulty at present is to figure out whether changes in ice cover are due to melting or to changes in the winds that shift the ice around. The only way to do this is to examine the entire Arctic at the same time.
Cryosat is the first satellite designed to do this job, and after six years in the making, we are really looking forward to getting our hands on the data
" - Duncan Wingham, Professor of Climate Physics at University College London, UK.



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VIDEO (Windows media player, 2Mb)

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On 8 October 2005 at 15:02 GMT, ESA will launch Cryosat, Europe's first satellite dedicated to the study of ice.
The ESA TV Service will provide extensive coverage of the mission, with pre-launch footage from the Plessetsk launch range, a live launch transmission from Plessetsk and ESOC, and a post-launch media briefing from ESRIN televised on 7-8 October.
The ESA TV feed is transmitted by the European Commission's "Europe by Satellite" (EbS) service.

Once launched, Cryosat will spend the next 3 years in orbit around the Earth, sending regular streams of data back to ESA’s Kiruna ground station in Sweden. If the Earth’s ice cover is melting, this data will allow scientists to conclusively prove it – providing another case for reducing greenhouse gas emissions before it is too late.

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The CryoSAT satellite will be launched at 15:02 GMT , October 8th, from the Plesetsk Space Centre, Russia, for high-precision monitoring of the thickness and length of ice sheets.
The 3.5-year CryoSAT mission will monitor Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, polar sea zones and mountain glaciers, as well as changes in the Ocean level.
The project is worth 70 million euros and will be launched on the Russian Rokot booster.

CryoSAT is the first spacecraft to be launched within the Living Planet, initiated by the European Space Agency in 1998. The program envisions 12 missions to explore the Earth from space.

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After leaving the Space Test Centre in Germany on 29 August, CryoSat has safely arrived at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 800 km north of Moscow, Russia. CryoSat is scheduled for launch on 8 October 2005 at 15h02 UTC.

The convoy was initially transported by truck from IABG (Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH) in Ottobrunn to Munich airport, where it was stored in a hangar over night before being loaded onto an Antonov-124 cargo aircraft for the three and a half hour flight to Talagi Airport, Archangel in Russia.
The spacecraft, however, did not travel alone – it was accompanied by a whole host of vital support equipment resulting in the shipment weighing in at around 60 tonnes and valuing some 80 million euros.

The CryoSat satellite was packed in its own nitrogen-pressurized container, while nine other containers housed items such as racks of electrical equipment to operate and test the spacecraft, and heavy mechanical equipment to lift and turn the satellite allowing engineers to gain overall access to the structure in the Integration Facility at the launch site.
An advance team was already in Archangel, and after they had ensured that everything was in order to receive the cargo on arrival, they gave the go-ahead for the flight from Munich to take-off. After a safe landing in Archangel in the evening of 30 August, the convoy was transported by truck to the local train station where it was lifted onto railcars.
For reasons of safety and security the special train made its journey through the night, arriving in Plesetsk on 1 September. So that the cargo wasn't at risk of being damaged the train had to travel extremely slowly. It therefore took most of the night to cover the 200 km journey southward to CryoSat's final destination

CryoSat's safe arrival in Plesetsk marks an important milestone in the project. The shipment was carried out with relative ease.
"Everything went according to plan. It is not the first time that ESA has used an Antonov, a fantastic plane indeed, to transport satellites to their launch site. Loading the plane was just a routine operation.
The train transport between Archangel and Plesetsk was also uneventful, thanks to the wide experience gained by Eurockot and Khrunichev during previous campaigns. For sure, I consider this transportation step as a very good start towards a successful launch campaign
" - Guy Ratier, CryoSat Project Manager.

CryoSat is the first in the series of Earth Explorer missions to be launched. Earth Explorers are small, inexpensive missions designed to provide some fast answers to a specific aspect of the Earth's environment. In this case, CryoSat is to determine rates of change in the thickness of marine and continental ice cover.
With speed and a limited budget in mind, the CryoSat project have found an elegant solution for launch, that being a Russian Rockot vehicle, which is actually a converted SS-19 ballistic missile launcher with an additional Breeze-KM upper stage. CryoSat will be the first ESA mission launched on Rockot followed by the Earth Explorers GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) in 2006 and SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) in 2007.



Now that CryoSat has arrived, unloading and unpacking is underway and the launch campaign will begin. Members of the CryoSat team in Plesetsk will oversee the thorough final testing period before the satellite is eventually jointed to the fairing and prepared for launch on 8 October.

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