U.S. military communications satellite fails to reach intended orbit

Reuters ^ | 2 Aug 2016 | Irene Klotz

[Moonman62]

Even so, the Hubble would have been cheaper to replace than repair it with a Shuttle mission.

In my original post I said a SpaceX mission would be improbable, but cool if it could be done.

BTW, the Falcon 9 now has 1.7 million pounds of thrust at launch.

“Think of this though. If we had something that could retrieve and return payloads from space, the Chinese and others would be claiming that we had a space weapon.”

Did you know that was one of the primary capabilities of the Shuttle? It was to launch from Vandenberg, snag Soviet satellites out of polar orbit and return to California all in one orbit before it could be detected. That’s why the Shuttle wings were overly large, so it could glide back to California to compensate for Earth rotation during the mission.

[Purdue77]

Did you know that was one of the primary capabilities of the Shuttle?

Actually I didn't. And which satellites were the intended targets?

My first assignment in the USAF was at VAFB working on the space shuttle program. That mission doesn't sound familiar. But, if we were going to snag Russian satellites it would have been above my classification at that time.

[Magnum44]

What a satellite can see also has to do with its orbit altitude. The ISS is in low Earth orbit. From its altitude at 52 degrees inclination, when it is at its northern most point in its orbit, it can see to its visible horizon which will be something above 52 degrees to something below 52 degrees (lets say 72 to 32 degrees latitude as rough numbers and avoid the math) and something similar in longitude for its present position. Its a spot on the Earth of roughly 20 degrees Earth angle in radius that is moving with the satellite in orbit.

At higher altitude the spot size (visible horizon being farther now) is much larger. A geosynchronous satellite at the Equator (which is where this satellite was headed) can see roughly up to 65 or 70 degrees in latitude and down to -65 or -70 degrees latitude, and cover a similar swath in longitude, which is a good chunk of the Earths surface.

Hope this helps.

[Purdue77]

Your comment: "I was referring to your comment that it would not go over much of the Earth. It will go over the same amount of Earth as if it were in any other orbit"

But you've lost the original discussion point. We weren't talking about what a satellite could potentially see but how much of the earth would be beneath the orbit trace. At least I was. Perhaps we are just providing answers to two different questions.

Enjoy the rest of the day.

[Moonman62]

It’s been awhile since I read about that, so I did some searching. It seems the long cross range glide capability was due to the military requirement to have a single orbit abort return to California after a launch at Vandenberg.

Apparently, in addition to that, there were military plans to do single orbit missions to snag satellites from polar orbits, both ours and theirs. Of course, there never was a Shuttle launch from Vandenberg, but the Shuttle was stuck with the large wings.

[Magnum44]

I did not lose anything. The point of the satellite is not to fly over as much of the Earth as it can. Its to provide communications coverage to as much surface area as possible. So your original comment was off point, if you are trying to do word battles here. Your suggestion that at 28 degrees inclination you don’t see high latitudes would lead an uniformed reader to think you were implying zero degrees to be even worse, when in fact that is where the satellite was headed to, and for the reasons I provided. I do this sort of thing, only at a much more detailed level, for a living.

FRegards

[Purdue77]

In 1982 someone in the shuttle office at VAFB started a shuttle launch pool. The shuttle was scheduled to launch in Mar 83. The calendar went something like this:

Jan 83

Feb 83

Mar 83

Mar 83

Mar 83

Mar 83

...

As you correctly said, the shuttle never launched from VAFB. After another four years or so and a billion dollars, they finally threw in the towel.

As an aside, one of the problems with launching at Vandenberg was the fog and all of the water in the atmosphere. Ice collecting on the external tank was even then considered a problem. In trying to find a solution, a condom company offered to make and supply condoms that broke away from the tank upon launch thus collecting the ice before it could impinge on the orbiter.

[Chode]

maybe it wasn't supposed to reach orbit...