[X] My Assistant

[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

[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.