Topic: Solar Sail carrier may have failed.

[Nemesis]

Link to full article

A revolutionary craft designed to use light from the Sun to power space travel may have malfunctioned shortly after launch, scientists fear.

No signals from the "solar sail" craft have been detected at mission control and controllers are unsure whether the sail separated from its launch rocket.

The 100kg (220lbs) Russian-built craft had been scheduled to reach an 800km- (500 mile-) high orbit.

It would then take pictures of Earth for four days before unfurling its eight aluminium-backed plastic sail blades into a 30m (100ft) circle.

Note that this is not a failure of the sail but of the satellite (or rocket) that carried it.

[Jack Morris]

Our rockets, their spacecraft, perfect match. If not for politics the Russkies and us would have been the unchallenged leaders of space travel. Remember our space shuttle failure, and if not for the Russkies, those astronauts would have been up the creek without a paddle. I for one am not too proud to ask for help when in dire straits.

[Nemesis]

Confirmed the launch vehicle failed.

Actually the Russians seem to have some very powerful heavy lifters.  What they need is a equitorial launch base with an east coast over the ocean. 

Alternate space craft launch system prototype tested.

Link to full article

The dummy boosters released by aircraft used a technique that caused them to rotate towards vertical without requiring wings. According to a company press statement, this concept allows an aft-crossing trajectory in which the air-launched hardware crosses behind the aircraft.

The test used the White Knight carrier aircraft that launched Spaceship One for the X-Prize.

[kmelew]

Actually the Russians seem to have some very powerful heavy lifters.  What they need is a equitorial launch base with an east coast over the ocean. 
 

I read not too long ago that the Russians signed a deal with the European Space Agency to use the ESA's launch site in French Guiana for some launches.

[Nemesis]

I read not too long ago that the Russians signed a deal with the European Space Agency to use the ESA's launch site in French Guiana for some launches.

There is such an agreement but I have not seen anything detailed.

When can they begin launching?  What guarantees of long term access?  How large the craft they can launch (ie manned) there?  How often?  The financial issues alone could delay things for years. 

[Stormbringer]

I wonder if the Planetary society has a back up craft and carrier. I may go look at their site to see if they are talking about a redo...

[Nemesis]

I wonder if the Planetary society has a back up craft and carrier. I may go look at their site to see if they are talking about a redo...

I doubt it, apparently they were not able to budget insurance for this one.  Total write off unless a minor miracle happens.  It is considered possible but highly unlikely that it made orbit somewhere.  If it did, it might still deploy and might be high enough to function.  The odds are very low.  I hope they get the luck, I think they deserve it.

[Stormbringer]

i wonder how expensive the hardware actually was. it was built with donations from planetary society members. sad. i bet though that the stuff is related to solar energy tracking systems and software. it might have been fairly cheap if so. and in that case perhaps a duplicate could be made quickly and cheaply.

[Nemesis]

This isn't the first.  An earlier one was also lost due to launcher problems but it was insured. 

The cost may not be primarily in the unit itself but in the launch fees.  As you know even a "simple" launch is far from cheap.

[Stormbringer]

True but it appears to me that the russians owe them a launch.

[Stormbringer]

From the planetary Society Cosmos 1 Blog: 

Jun 23, 2005 | 16:37 PDT | 23:37 UTC

It's not over yet.

It's been much quieter here at The Planetary Society than over the last few days. There's not much new news to report. But we had a long chat with Lou this morning, and he emphasized to us that the analysis of the data that was received at the three ground stations on launch day is continuing. It's a challenge to compare the information between them, because each of the ground stations is different. The two at Petropavlovsk and Majuro were portable UHF antennas, very different from the permanent station at Panska Ves. The analysis is made more challenging by the fact that the people who gathered the data are now in transit from those remote locations to their home facilities. Viktor Kerzhanovich, who was at Majuro, will be back in Pasadena tomorrow, so the POP team will get their heads together and work over the Majuro data again upon his return. Lou himself will be back in town late tomorrow evening.

As for the rest of us here at the Society, we're in standby mode, just waiting to hear anything new, anything definitive. We still don't know which one of the many possible scenarios that could have happened on launch day was the one that actually played out. Makeev (the group that built the Volna rocket) has given another statement, reporting that that the rocket’s stages never separated and that it went down near Novaya Zemlya, a group of islands that separates the Barents Sea (which is where Cosmos 1 launched) from the Kara Sea. Which would make detection at Petropavlovsk, Majuro, and Panska Ves not make sense. So the team is poking at that data, checking to see if there's any alternative explanation.

I feel like a broken record. I know I'm saying the same things over and over. But these same things are running over and over in all of our minds, as we work, drive, eat, and sleep. What happened to Cosmos 1? I hope we find out soon! There are some space missions that vanished without a trace, with no way of finding any information about their loss -- Beagle 2 being the most recent one that comes to mind. Others left a confusing trail of data that was eventually pieced together, like Mars 96. But a very few spacecraft vanished and then reappeared, like SOHO. We are still holding out the slim hope that Cosmos 1 will turn up, alive and well, and will deploy those sails two days from now.

[Nemesis]

It's not over yet.

I hope not.  Solar Sails have a great deal of potential it would be good to see it realized.

[Stormbringer]

if this one did fail I hope that rich donors step in and fund another mission. Gates, Rutan, that guy at Virgin Galactic Airlines...

[Nemesis]

if this one did fail I hope that rich donors step in and fund another mission. Gates, Rutan, that guy at Virgin Galactic Airlines...

I don't know if Rutan is that rich, he needed outside funding for Spaceship One.  Gates won't do it, not his style.  Branson I don't know enough about.  Paul Allen perhaps. 

[Stormbringer]

I'm going out on a limb to say the actual hardware and stuff cost from less than one million to a couple a'. this was a planetary society project after all. Not the richest of orgs.