July 2nd Proton M/Block DM-03 mission
failed due to incorrectly installed angular velocity sensors
About eight seconds after lift-off from
the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 0238 UTC on 2 July 2013, the Proton
M/Block DM-03 mission with three GLONASS navigational satellites veered off of
its flight path and finally hit the ground about 30 seconds after lift-off. The
crash occurred in a safe area that was evacuated for the launch and nobody was
injured. It was the first Proton accident involving the first stage in the
post-Soviet era.
It has been officially confirmed that
the crash was caused by incorrectly installed angular velocity sensors. The
mistake affected three of six yaw angular velocity sensors on the rocket, said
deputy head of Roskosmos, Alexander Lopatin, citing a state commission's
investigation of the crash. The mistake could have been the fault of either the
worker who installed the sensors or the engineer who drew up the construction
blueprints. The wrongly installed sensors bore the trace of being forced into
place, he added. So there are some precautions to prevent incorrect
installation, however it seems they aren't good enough.
There is no provision for spotting such
a mistake in current pre-launch procedures, Mr. Lopatin said. The commission is
drafting a set of measures to rectify the situation, including possible filming
of sensor installation procedures for pre-launch review.
All Proton boosters already produced
are going to be double-checked and all personnel involved in rocket assembling
are being retrained.
Also, the launch vehicle lifted off 0.4
seconds earlier than scheduled, however the following analysis and simulations
of the flight had shown that this situation could not have caused the accident.
The investigation commission continues its work to determine the cause of the
premature separation of electric interfaces connecting the launch pad to the
rocket.
Proton-M launches will probably restart
in September, after the accident board presents its final report, Mr. Lopatin
said.
In related news, operations to remove
toxic material from the crash site at the Baikonur cosmodrome have been
completed, the Kazakh Space Agency Kazcosmos said. Operations to remove the
remaining fragments of the crashed rocket are going on, it said.
Source:Novosti,
Moscow Times, RussianSpaceWeb.com
UK Space Agency to develop world's
first air-breathing rocket engine
The UK Space Agency is set to invest
£60 million (US$90.5 million) in the development of the SABRE engine. Built by
UK company Reaction Engines (REL), SABRE is designed to extract the oxygen it
needs for low atmosphere flight from the air itself, paving the way for
spaceplanes that would be lighter, reusable and able to take off and launch
from conventional airport runways.
Reaction Engines' concept for an
84-m-long, unpiloted vehicle called Skylon would be one such spaceplane, doing
the job of a big rocket but operating like an aeroplane. The project, which has
already successfully passed a UK Space Agency technical assessment, would provide
reliable access to space and be capable of delivering payloads of up to 15
tonnes into Low Earth Orbit at about 1/50th of the cost of traditional
expendable launch vehicles, such as rockets.
Having passed vital tests in November
2012, it is the first time a heat exchanger that is light and efficient enough
to go into space has been developed. By managing the hot air entering it at
high speeds, SABRE would be able to get some of the oxygen it needs from the
air rather than it having to be stored onboard the spaceplane. Reaching Mach 5
at 26,000 feet, a SABRE engine could switch to full rocket mode to reach orbit,
using on-board fuel supplies. This advantage enables a spaceplane to fly
lighter from the outset and to make a single leap to orbit, rather than using
and dumping propellant stages on the ascent - as is the case with current
expendable rockets.
Over the next four years, the money
will be spent on four major elements of the SABRE engine development each of
which is critical to realising the full production engine design at the end of
the project:
- the heart of the investment will be the SABRE engine technical design work;
- improving the lightweight heat exchanger technology and manufacturing capability;
- wind tunnel and flight testing of SABRE engine components;
- and a significant part of the programme will be a ground demonstration of the engine.
- a prototype SABRE is expected by 2017, and flight tests for the engine around 2020.
Source:UKSA
PR
Chinese probe reaches record distance in
space travel
China's space probe
Chang'e-2 has travelled about 50 million km into space from Earth. The probe,
which is "in good conditions," reached the distance on 13 July (UTC),
the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence(SASTIND)
said in a statement.
Chang'e-2 will be able to travel as far as
300 million km away from Earth, according to calculations done by scientists
from the Beijing Aerospace Control Center.
Chang'e-2 was launched on 1 October 2010
from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China and later orbited the
moon to finish a more extensive probe than its predecessor Chang'e-1.
On 9 June 2011, after finishing its lunar
objectives, Chang'e-2 left its lunar orbit for an extended mission to the
Earth-Sun L2 Lagrangian point.
Since its blast-off, Chang'e-2 has made
multi-faceted achievements: being the first to capture full coverage map of the
moon with a resolution of seven meters; being the first object ever to reach
the L2 point directly from lunar orbit.
On 13 December 2012, the probe flew by
Toutatis, an asteroid about seven million km away from the Earth, making China
the fourth after the United States, the European Union and Japan to be able to
examine an asteroid by spacecraft.
Source: Xinhua
Chinese
Rocket Engine Test a Big Step for Space Station Project
China has successfully test-fired the
rocket engine that will power the next-generation heavy-lift booster, the Long
March 5, that will help drive the country's space exploration into the final
frontier.
The new rocket engine is closely tied to China's
planned space station, and is a big step forward for the country's moon
exploration program. The first engine test, carried out on June 29, lasted
roughly three minutes from ignition to shutdown, according to the China Manned
Space Engineering Office.
The Long March 5 is one of China's new
generation of rockets, which feature larger carrying capacities, are being
pursued during a 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015). Addition to the Long
March 5, China is drawing up plans fora medium-size Long March 7.
"The rockets in service cannot meet
the demand from a future manned space station," Yuan Jie, deputy general
manager of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), told the
state-run Xinhua news agency in June. "We need rockets with even larger
carrying capacities."
