Latest Cubesat Depnr Launch Options

[djellison]

http://cubesat.calpoly.edu/
20:04 UTC
Launch was unsuccessful, updates as soon as we get them

There were a lot of great cubesat projects on that vehicle -
http://cubesat.atl.calpoly.edu/pages/missi...lite-status.php

So sad for the students who've put their time into these projects...a really really hard lesson to learn. Seems like quite a few failures from these cheap converted ICBM russian LV's over the past year or so.

Doug

[SkyeLab]

BBC have picked up the story @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/5219468.stm

Brian

[djellison]

I popped into the Cubesat IRC channel after the launch failure, and a lot of the teams seemed sad, but up-beat - the point being that a Cubesat project is a success when it gets to the pad, and that orbital ops is a very nice bonus that they expect to occur, but are not gutted if it doesn't.


Doug

[volcanopele]

The student team members of RINCON and SACRED are based here at the University of Arizona. I watched the launch from one of the lecture rooms in Kuiper, but left before they knew it was unsuccessful. There was slightly delayed webcast feed and translated commentary from another cubesat team member. After watching for 5 minutes or so post-launch, I had no idea it had failed when I left to get back to work, just assumed that the reason we couldn't see the rocket in the video after a minute or so was because of either a bad connection or an incompetent camera person. The commentary was making it sound as if everything was going smoothly (turns out he was just translating the predict events, what the craft SHOULD be doing at any given time, not what it actually was doing).

About an hour or two later after the launch, one of the student team members who also does software work for HiRISE, came in and informed us of the failure. Really sad to see something they've worked on for so long fail in a not so subtle way, but I guess that's better than failures where you are just left with questions about how it happened. There was quite a few local media in the lecture room also watching the launch, and I guess they hounded Ben with question about what he thought about the failure...

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

James Oberg has published a fairly inflamatory rant about this accident.

Oberg

[Big_Gazza]

James Oberg has published a fairly inflamatory rant about this accident.

Oberg

This guy has an agenda. A Ruskie-hater from way back. People like him don't seem to care that the Cold War is over, with their life-long obsession with slagging off the commies always oozing to the surface when an opportunity presents itself.

The Dnepr failure was unfortunate, but it was the first failure from 7 launches.

[JimO]

This guy has an agenda. A Ruskie-hater from way back. People like him don't seem to care that the Cold War is over, with their life-long obsession with slagging off the commies always oozing to the surface when an opportunity presents itself.

Funny, the Russians don't see me that way. My books are on display in space museums from Moscow to Baykonur. I'm the guy the space workers knew would tell the truth about their efforts -- how hard the successes were, how bitter the failures were -- when the political officials lied and lied and lied, and many in the West embraced and echoed the lies (say, Walter Cronkite, for example). Natch, when history has vindicated that approach, folks who lament the fall of Communism (and are apoplectic at the prospect that Catro will soon die and Cubans will have a chance to rejoin the free world) are going to whine. Join your idols in the dustbin of history, is my advice.

My home page is www.jamesoberg.com, with lots and lots of this sort of material.

PS: The UFO nuts also whine about my agenda, with so many of their favorite 'unsolved mysteries' explained as prosaic space and missile events (including Soviet military space and missile tests that Moscow preferred its people and the outside world misinterpret as 'space aliens' instead of secret, illegal space weapons tests).

[JimO]

"Castro", or course. That's as in Fidel Castro (1926-2006), hopefully. I got the champagne ready.

[volcanopele]

Well Jim to the forum!

I was told by one of the RINCON team members (again, one of the numerous cubesats on this particular launch), that this unusual trajectory was chosen to prevent the missile from being mistaken as a nuclear missile launch by the United States since the rocket would be over our radar networks fairly quickly, whereas it would take much longer by going to the Southwest. It sounds from your article that this wasn't the case, but I am willing to hear what others have to say about that [Ben, do you read this thead, maybe you can clarify?].

[mcaplinger]

I was told by one of the RINCON team members (again, one of the numerous cubesats on this particular launch), that this unusual trajectory was chosen to prevent the missile from being mistaken as a nuclear missile launch by the United States...

That doesn't sound plausible to me. The primary payload for this launch was BelKA, a Belarussian remote sensing satellite intended for a sun-sync orbit. I think it is true that many Russian sun-sync launches are from Plesetsk, not Baikonur, so it may be somewhat unusual in that regard.

[JimO]

There are two ways to launch into sun-synch orbits from Baykonur, to the north (edging westerly) and to the south (edging westerly as well). The ESA METOP weather satellite was supposed to take the northerly variant last month but three countdowns resulted only in three scrubs, and they will try again in a few months. That route goes directly over the center of North America (overhead above Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, as a matter of fact ), so yes, it would look scary if it wasn't expected -- and METOP was expected, NORAD was alert to it, so no problem.

As to why Dnepr was sent on the southern variant, it might have to do with where stages impact -- but I really would like to know more about the decision process myself . It is an excellent question.

[djellison]

I really don't buy the nuclear launch story....surely one could just inform the appropriate people and advise "we will be launching one of these, between these hours, from this place"

Doug

[JimO]

I really don't buy the nuclear launch story....surely one could just inform the appropriate people and advise "we will be launching one of these, between these hours, from this place"

Doug

Exactly correct -- the appropriate US officials were informed well in advance...

[volcanopele]

I really don't buy the nuclear launch story....surely one could just inform the appropriate people and advise "we will be launching one of these, between these hours, from this place"

Doug

That's what I thought too, thanks for bringing that up.

[mcaplinger]

According to the Dnepr User's Guide (http://www.kosmotras.ru/archive2.htm page 64) polar launches are always southward.