Europe's new heavy-lift rocket has failed on its maiden flight.
Posted on 12/11/2002 5:11:48 PM PST by MadIvan
Europe's new heavy-lift rocket has failed on its maiden flight.
The Ariane 5-ESCA blasted off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana at 1921 (2221 GMT) local time and blew up three minutes later.
| We have already known failures, we will know more Jean-Yves Le Gall, Arianespace |
It is not clear whether the vehicle suffered a catastrophic failure or controllers noticed something was wrong and took the painful decision to destroy the rocket.
Main stage
Wednesday's launch was the second attempt to get the Ariane 5-ESCA airborne. The first countdown on 28 November was halted because of a computer glitch.
The launcher was a beefed-up version of the vehicle that first went into full commercial service in 1999.
Wednesday's explosion was the fourth failure of an Ariane 5 rocket in its 14-mission history. The failure is likely to halt Ariane 5 flights indefinitely.
Early investigations are likely to centre on the new components of the rocket.
UK space scientist Dr Andrew Coates, who lost experiments on the first Ariane 5 failure in 1986, said: "This seemed to happen just after the solid fuel boosters would have been jettisoned but still while the main stage was burning so the most likely explanation is that something went wrong with the main stage."
Comet question
The setback will now put an enormous question mark over Europe's upcoming science mission Rosetta, designed to put a lander on Comet Wirtanen.
The Rosetta craft was due to launch on the next Ariane 5 flight on 12 January. Its eight-year journey to the comet requires the probe to be swung around Mars once and Earth twice to get it in the right position to catch the comet.
"It has quite a narrow launch window and if it doesn't go in January I don't know when it will go quite frankly," UK space technologist Dr Chris Welch said.
He speculated the mission might have to risk a flight rather than see years of research and millions of euros go to waste.
Cruel reminder
The Ariane 5 launcher lost on Wednesday was carrying a double payload: a Hotbird TM7 for the European telecoms consortium Eutelsat, and Stentor, an experimental communications satellite for the French space research institute CNES.
The debris would have fallen into the Atlantic Ocean. The satellites were likely to have been insured.
The boss of Arianespace, Jean-Yves Le Gall, immediately apologised to his two customers.
"At this stage it is too early to give precise reasons for this failure," he said.
"Our job is difficult. It's at moments like this we are cruelly reminded of it," he added. "We have already known failures, we will know more."
As the former owner of no less than three Peugeots I know what you mean.
Indeed. I have been "on console" for three major vehicle losses during launch. :-(
,,, I've never heard of KarlB and I'll admit that I'd given satellite launching little thought, other than knowing the Chinese can do it a whole lot cheaper than the US and get it right too. That seems to be the trend with them these days though, doesn't it? I'm glad to know there's a rocket scientist like you whom I can turn to for future advice. Thanx for confirming, firstly, that I'm an idiot and secondly, your clear superiority.
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