CryoSat Mission Lost Due To Launch Failure
- Date:
- October 11, 2005
- Source:
- European Space Agency
- Summary:
- Yuri Bakhvalov, First Deputy Director General of the Khrunichev Space Centre on behalf of the Russian State Commission officially confirmed that the launch of CryoSat ended in a failure due to an anomaly in the launch sequence and expressed his regret to ESA and all partners involved.
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Yuri Bakhvalov, First Deputy Director General of theKhrunichev Space Centre on behalf of the Russian State Commissionofficially confirmed that the launch of CryoSat ended in a failure dueto an anomaly in the launch sequence and expressed his regret to ESAand all partners involved.
Preliminary analysis of thetelemetry data indicates that the first stage performed nominally. Thesecond stage performed nominally until main engine cut-off was tooccur. Due to a missing command from the onboard flight control systemthe main engine continued to operate until depletion of the remainingfuel.
As a consequence, the separation of the second stage fromupper stage did not occur. Thus, the combined stack of the two stagesand the CryoSat satellite fell into the nominal drop zone north ofGreenland close to the North Pole into high seas with no consequencesto populated areas.
An investigating commission by the RussianState authorities has been established to further analyze the reasonsfor the failure, results are expected within the next weeks. Thiscommission will work in close cooperation with a failure investigationboard consisting of Eurockot, ESA and Khrunichev representatives.
This information is released at the same time by Eurockot and ESA.
Story Source:
Materials provided by European Space Agency. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
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