Cosmos1 Ships in Preparation for June Launch

[dmcowen674]

The booster rocket misfired sending the craft crashing back to Earth

6-22-2005 Russian Space Agency: Solar Launch Failed

MOSCOW - The world's first solar sail spacecraft crashed back to Earth when its booster rocket failed less than two minutes after Tuesday's takeoff, Russian space officials said Wednesday.

The Volna booster rocket failed 83 seconds after its launch from a Russian nuclear submarine in the northern Barents Sea just before midnight Tuesday in Moscow, the Russian space agency said.

Its spokesman, Vyacheslav Davidenko, said that "the booster's failure means that the solar sail vehicle was lost." The Russian navy began a search for debris from the booster and the vehicle, he said.

The project involved Russia's Lavochkin research production institute that built the vehicle and was financed by an organization affiliated to the U.S. Planetary Society.

 

[RaySun2Be]

I was looking forward to seeing how well the solar sails worked. This is definitely a bummer.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: RaySun2Be
I was looking forward to seeing how well the solar sails worked. This is definitely a bummer.

Well hold on, it may still be flying around the planet in a screwy orbit.

Signals were picked up during a radio silence period indicating that it is way off course.

6-22-2005 Search begins for missing solar sail spacecraft

Cosmos 1, the first solar sail-powered spacecraft, appeared to be "alive" and sending signals to tracking stations but could be in a lower orbit than planned, said mission backers at the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California.

"We have no evidence that anything is wrong with the spacecraft at all," said Bruce Betts, the Planetary Society's director of projects, late on Tuesday.

Weak signals received by tracking stations in the Pacific Ocean, Russia and the Czech Republic seemed to show that Cosmos 1 had made it into orbit.

Mission controllers discovered after reviewing telemetry data recorded by the stations that the craft had signaled its passage during what had been believed to be several hours of radio silence, said Planetary Society co-founder Bruce Murray.

"The good news is we have reason to believe it's alive and in orbit," said Murray, a former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The bad news is we don't know where it is."

The signal appeared weak probably because the orbiter had veered off course during its final rocket burn, and ground antennae were now trained on the wrong part of the sky, Murray said.

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If this thing is truly actually in orbit flying around the planet and no Agency can spot it with their equipment, suggests we are still very blind as far as monitoring our immediate space.

Certainly would give credence to those that see UFO's.

 

[SirUlli]

10:30 am PDT, June 22 (17:30 UTC)

The Planetary Society as issued the following statement on the fate of Cosmos 1, the first Solar Sail Spacecraft:

In the past twenty-four hours, the Russian space agency (RKA) has made a tentative conclusion that the Volna rocket carrying Cosmos 1 failed during the firing of the first stage. This would mean that Cosmos 1 is lost.

While it is likely that this conclusion is correct, there are some inconsistent indications from information received from other sources. The Cosmos 1 team observed what appear to be signals, that looks like they are from the spacecraft when it was over the first three ground stations and some Doppler data over one of these stations. This might indicate that Cosmos 1 made it into orbit, but probably a lower one than intended. The project team now considers this to be a very small probability. But because there is a slim chance that it might be so, efforts to contact and track the spacecraft continue. We are working with US Strategic Command to provide additional information in a day or so.

If the spacecraft made it to orbit, its autonomous program might be working, and after 4 days the sails could automatically deploy. While the chances of this are very, very small, we still encourage optical observers to see if the sail can be seen after that time.

We await further developments and information coming out of Russia, STRATCOM, and the tracking stations.

Fingers crossed

http://www.planetary.org/solarsail/latest_update.html

Sir Ulli

 

[RaySun2Be]

Keeping my fingers crossed. At least there is some hope, even slight.

 

[Assimilator1]

I hope it has made it! ,be a damn shame if its lost

Btw Ulli I was refering to intial take off only