Posted on 11/19/2020 2:19:08 PM PST by BenLurkin
An Arianespace Vega rocket carrying two satellites failed to reach orbit yesterday after experiencing a catastrophic failure eight minutes into the launch. Officials are attributing the loss of the rocket to a “series of human errors.”
Vega Flight VV17 started off well, with the 98-foot-tall (30-meter) rocket departing the Guiana Space Center at 8:52 p.m. ET. The first three stages, all powered by solid-fuel, did their job, propelling the vehicle and its cargo over the Atlantic ocean toward space. It was when the liquid-fueled upper stage kicked in that things went sideways.
According to satellite launch company Arianespace, the trouble began around the eight-minute mark of the mission. At that point, the upper stage, called AVUM (Attitude and Vernier Upper Module), correctly detached itself and ignited, in what was supposed to be the first of four consecutive rocket burns. Immediately after the first ignition, however, AVUM went off course, never to recover. The upper stage and its cargo—the Spanish SEOSAT-Ingenio Earth observation satellite and the French TARANIS atmospheric observation satellite—plunged into an uninhabited area, said an Arianespace statement.
Arianespace said future launches, including three scheduled for later this year, shouldn’t be affected by this latest setback. Speaking at the press conference, Stéphane Israël, chief executive of Arianespace, said yesterday’s accident is unrelated to the failed Vega launch from July 10, 2019, in which an imaging satellite belonging to the United Arab Emirates was lost. Arianespace attributed that incident to
Incidents involving space and human errors are rare, but they do happen. Some notorious examples include the loss of NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999 due to the engineering team’s failure to convert imperial measurements to metric and a recent air leak on the ISS attributed to shoddy workmanship (or possibly sabotage).
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
Mon deiu! Le merde!
“During assembly, it is believed that two cables carrying control signals to the thrust vectoring actuators on the AVUM’s RD-843 engine were crossed. With the guidance signals going to the wrong actuators, the vehicle was uncontrollable and began to tumble. As a result, the satellites did not achieve orbital velocity.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_flight_VV17#Inquiry_commission
Whoopsie.
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