March 2012 Archives

The last launch of a Russian Proton K vehicle took place on 30 March at 0549 GMT carrying the last of a long line of Oko (Eye) Early Warning satellites. The last Oko satellite is to be placed in geostationary orbit to monitor US missile launches. The Oko satellites will be replaced by a new Russian Early Warning system dubbed EKS that will have its own constellation of satellites.

According to the Ascend SpaceTrak database the Proton K vehicle has attempted 309 orbital launches and has failed 36 times. The Proton M is now the only Proton launch vehicle flying. It successfully launched the Intelsat 22 commercial communications spacecraft in an ILS marketed flight on 25 March. 

  The Oko satellites were first launched in 1972 and the operational constellation was intended to have four satellites in a highly elliptical Molniya orbit and two satellites in geostationary orbit to provide early warning of a US ballistic missile attack. The satellites employed infra-red telescopes to detect the heat of a missile exhaust against the cold surface of the Earth. 

Proton M launches Intelsat 22 satellite on 25 March. Image courtesy of ILS

 

 

The Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has, via a spokesperson,  indicated his displeasure at the public spat between senior executives involved in the Russian space programme and noted the damage it could do to Russia's space industry.  This was after the head of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, used a media interview with Izvestia to refute media allegations that his recently incurred minor head injuries were sustained either in a drunken fall or brawl at a party, and his critics had called for his resignation.

Popovkin fired back in this Izvestia interview after deputy head of Russian Space Systems, Ivan Golub, posted an open letter on the Russian Space Systems website calling on Popovkin to resign after accusing him of poor management, and of mounting "illegal audits".  In the interview Popovkin noted that the media reports and allegations had been promulgated to discredit him while he attempted to make reforms to increase financial transparency and counter corruption in the Russian space industry.

Popovkin's press secretary, Anna Vedishcheva, had previously noted that the reports of drunkenness and fighting were part of a "media provocation" against her boss.  The former glamour model turned press secretary was not a disinterested party.   It had been reported that it was over her that the alleged office party fight took place.

• See earlier post.

In addition to his own Blue Origin rocket pursuits, Amazon guru Jeff Bezos is also interested in space history and artefacts. He is leading a team attempting to find parts of the first stage of the Saturn V rocket which was used to launch the Apollo 11 first moon landing expedition in July 1969. Bezos has reported that his team and has now found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14,000 feet below the surface in the Atlantic using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar.

The team hopes to recover these engines and display them (with NASA's permission) in various museums including the Smithsonian Air and Space museum.  The condition of the engines is not yet known.

Meteor 1-1, the Soviet Union's first operational meteorological satellite that was launched on 26 March 1969 re-entered Earth's atmosphere at around 2217 GMT on Monday 26 March. The satellite re-entered over Antarctica and most, if not all, of the satellite will have burnt up but any residue debris will have landed in the Queen Maud Land region of Antarctica.

ISRO and the Indonesian Space Agency have agreed to launch the Indonesian IinuSat on a PSLV vehicle in early 2013. The agreed cost of the launch will be 100,000 Euros. The IiunSat is being built by students from six Indonesian Universities, the satellite will have a launch mass of around 30 kilograms and will have a communications and metrological mission.

The Barcelona Moon Team, the Spanish entrant in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, has announced that they have signed an agreement with China Great Wall Industry Corporation on 19 March to launch their spacecraft in the second half of 2014. The launch will probably use a Long March 3B vehicle to place the spacecraft into Lunar orbit from where it is planned to deploy a robot onto the Lunar surface.

 

One admitted consequence of selecting a Chinese launcher is that the Barcelona Moon Team are unable to use any US manufactured components for their spacecraft due to the US ITAR regulations.

While the George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and its film and theatre musical derivative My Fair Lady had Professor Henry Higgins teaching common shop girl Eliza Doolittle the finer points of English and etiquette so NASA has apparently taken a leaf from his book.

While NASA is officially an agency of that classless society calling itself the United States of America. NASA reports staff and NASA's Langley research center are being encouraged to enrol in a course called "Outclass the Competition: Dine Like a Diplomat" which teaches them the finer points of manners while eating and speaking in social situations.

The etiquette class, which is run by a genteel lady from the southern states called Cheryl Cleghorn who holds the title NASA Langley's outreach and protocol coordinator, is designed to give staff the best chance of getting new business for the centre.

Tips from the "classy" class include: 

• No using a mobile/cell phone at the table
• Pass the salt and pepper together
• Don't use your fork as a shovel (American style)
• Eat soup dipping your spoon out from the chin, rather than in
• Always hold a wine glass by the stem
• Never eat from someone else's plate
• Never order a doggie bag

Of course Presidents and Prime Ministers do not always show such good table manners themselves. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, showing his "man of the people" credentials usually used a mug to drink his tea with and not a china cup and saucer as a true gentlemen would. Worse, he famously once publicly eschewed using a spoon and lifted his bowl up to drink his soup. Mind you this not-so-gentlemanly author also does this latter one  - but only in private and with the curtains shut.

The six crew members of the International Space Station took shelter in their Soyuz capsules on Saturday 24 March when a piece of debris was calculated to come close to the station. The debris came from the Cosmos 2251 and Iridium 33 satellite collision in 2009. The debris came within 15 kilometres of the station and once the danger had gone the crew were allowed to return inside.

 

The Express AM-4 satellite that had been stranded in a useless orbit since its failed launch last August, was intentionally deorbited on 25 March over the North Pacific Ocean. The satellites engines were fired about 1033 GMT to force the craft to enter Earth's atmosphere. While most, if not all, of the satellite will have burnt up some debris may have come down in the North Pacific.

This also ends any chance of Polar Broadband Systems using the satellite to provide communications over the Antarctic. (See our earlier blog entry for 15 March).

This Hyperbola blog post is written by guest writer and expert on the commercial satellite business, Roger Rusch, President, TelAstra, Inc. who makes his analysis of the main themes apparent at the Satellite 2012 communications satellite conference held in Washington D.C. during March.

Courtesy: Astrium

The satellite communications industry is thriving. Profits are growing but there are signs that it may be slowing down a bit. Some of the new satellite launches have been stretched out. That said, due to the natural replenishment ordering cycle, the number of commercial GEO satellites ordered dropped from 28 in 2010 to 17 in 2011. Meanwhile, most satellite operators are expecting a larger fraction of unused capacity as new higher-capacity satellites are launched.  But while these small changes seem unlikely to disturb the 'steady as you go' growth of the business, in fact there are indications are that the satellite industry could be in midst of some major, even revolutionary, changes.

If you missed it live, replay the European Space Agency's latest Ariane 5 launch on twitter @thisdell - or, watch a replay on ESA TV

Lightsquared has issued an update to Flightglobal on the condition of its SkyTerra 1 satellite after it was knocked out by a solar storm:

A network outage over our SkyTerra 1 satellite began at approximately at 13:30 GMT on 7 March. On 10 March, all traffic carried on SkyTerra 1 was transferred over to the MSAT satellite system, which is in place to provide coverage and service redundancy for our satellite network. The MSAT system will continue to carry this traffic for an indefinite amount of time while we make deliberate plans with our customers to move the traffic back. Services will be restored over our SkyTerra 1 Space Based Network as soon as operationally feasible and in conjunction with customer coordination to avoid disruption to their services.

The LightSquared and Boeing team have  preliminarily concluded that the original loss of traffic was due to the solar flare experienced on 7 March, that impaired two sensors on the satellite causing the on board computers to go to safe mode. This was a temporary condition caused by the extreme levels of radiation due to the flare. This required a complete reboot of the satellite and checkout of its systems. This is why we made the determination to move customer traffic over to the redundant MSAT system in the interim. A detailed investigation and root cause and corrective action is ongoing.

The internet site broadbandreports.com has indicated that the Spaceway 3 communications satellite owned by Hughes Network Systems was knocked out as the result of a solar storm losing service from 0400GMT on 13 March. The service on that satellite was restored on the following day. The source also indicates that the week previously, the LightSquared-owned Skyterra 1 satellite was knocked out on 7 March but has yet to be returned to service.

Read the report

The internet is awash with rumours that aliens are sucking off our sun in an attempt to refuel their planet sized spacecraft. This was after moving composite imagery taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and processed by NASA's NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, was posted on YouTube. It appeared to show a large spherical object apparently sucking off material from our star. The footage is actually of a solar filament extending thousands of miles from the Sun's surface with the spherical 'planet' illusion being caused by the irregular shape of the Sun's atmosphere (corona). The filament prominence appears dark because it is cooler that the background.

 

The Express AM-4 satellite that was carried on a Proton M vehicle that suffered an upper stage failure on 17 August 2011 that left the satellite stranded in a 20416 by 657 kilometre orbit. The satellite was classed as a total insurance loss and was due to be de-orbited by the end of March 2012.

However it is claimed by Polar Broadband Systems who thought up the plan, that there could be a chance to use the satellite by placing it into a highly elliptical orbit with its apogee over the southern hemisphere and it could then have a ten year life using its 63 transponders to provide communications services over the Antarctic to support the scientific communities of the many countries that have research facilities on that continent. By boosting the satellite into a 25,000 kilometre by 46,000 kilometre orbit and leave the inclination at 51 degrees would place the satellite into a 24 hour highly elliptical orbit that would provide up to 14 hours of service to the Antarctic every day. Polar Broadband Systems say that plan has been technically vetted and has little associated risk and that the scientific community is enthusiastic about the project as it would provide them with a much needed resource.

Orbital Geometry

While this has been proposed by Polar Broadband Systems to the Russian Satellite Communications Company, who currently control the satellite no decision has been made that will allow the manoeuvres to begin to take the satellite to the desired orbit. Time is running out for the satellite which under current plans is due to be de-orbited in the near future.

 

After dramatic newswire reports that General Vladimir Popovkin, head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, had been hospitalised due to "physical and emotional exhaustion" the exact cause remains a mystery. The Russian newspapers originally noted that the Popovkin fell on the stairs of the space agency hitting his head on the marble railing. However, according to the Daily Express newspaper who quote from other Moscow media sources, Popovkin was injured with a head wound after an alleged "fight over a woman" at an office party. A man, who has not been identified, was alleged to have struck General Popovkin with a glass bottle. According to the reports the space official Aleksander Paramonov was also hospitalised from the party.

The world's insurance market gathered at the World Space Risk Forum held in Dubai on 28 February - 1 March. Organised by the Dubai-based insurer Elseco, the forum has now become the main biennial conference for space insurers. David Todd reports on the discussions,

Annual in-orbit cover remains unloved: operators really want multi-year deals and revenue insurance

In fixing the underwriting errors of the late 1990s and early 2000s,the space insurance market has had a series of mainly profitable years. Meantime, as the commercial demand for bandwidth hungry high definition television and broadband mobile services has grown which even the military makes use of, so has the demand for new large communications satellites.  As a result the insurance market is set to benefit from insurance premium given that most major operators tend to insure the launch and first year in orbit.

Space Station astronauts are probably more disappointed than we imagined by the delay - from 9 to 23 March - of the European Space Agency's launch of its third Automated Transfer Vehicle robotic supply ship. Named Edoardo Amaldi after the late Italian physicist considered a pioneer of European spaceflight, ATV-3 is loaded with some 2.5t of dry cargo, water and oxygen, in addition to 5.4t of fuel to power itself and "re-boost" the Station to its full altitude. Another 860kg (1,900lb) of fuel will be carried for transfer to the Russian part of the Station.

But now we learn a bit more about that cargo. According to the ATV's builder, Astrium, one of the items the ATV-3 will be carrying is a new ventilator for the European Columbus laboratory, a component that needs regular replacement.

But of much more pressing concern to the astronauts are toothbrushes of different bristle hardness and toothpaste of various flavours - sort of a care package designed to make them feel at home 400km above the ground.

And, they'll also find some Lego Technic sets, part of a range of experiments that NASA is conducting for a special series of lessons for school pupils back on Earth.

Let's just hope the 153 bags containing 1,062 individual items are well labelled, and that the toothpaste and Lego aren't buried too deep in the ATV's hold.

Following its rescheduling from 9 March to Friday 23 March of the Ariane 5 launch to deliver the third Automated Transfer Vehicle robotic supply ship to the International Space Station, the European Space Agency has set the night of 28-29 March for the ship's docking with the Station's Russian Zvezda module.
The precise time will be known after launch, which is set for 04:31 GMT (05:31 CET) from ESA's Kourou, French Guiana spaceport.
The cause of the launch delay, announced on 2 March, has not been detailed but has to do with further checks required on the ATV rather than the Ariane 5 rocket.According to launch operator Arianespace, "a routine inspection concluded that additional measures were required to maximize ATV Edoardo Amaldi's launch readiness".

The two previous ATV launches in February 2011 and March 2008, also from French Guiana, were successful.

The LEGO shuttle prepares for re-entry. Yes, you can still see the strings.

While using helium balloons to carry GPS tracked cameras to image the "edge of space" is now being regularly done by amateurs, a Romanian man, Raul Oaida has come up with an amusingly interesting variation. He has made a LEGO space shuttle in a tribute to the now retired manned system. The "launch" reportedly took place from central Germany on 31 December 2011 and reached an altitude of 35000m before the balloon popped and the shuttle came back to Earth.

Courtesy: Raul Oaida/YouTube

It turns out it's the payload - the third of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle robotic Space Station re-supply ships - not the Ariane 5 rocket that's behind the delay to the 9 March launch.

While visiting the Playboy website is officially frowned upon during company work time while using company machines, at least space cadets now have an excuse. Playboy has released some concept artwork of a possible club/hotel in space. The concept is courtesy of Adam Wells, the head designer of Virgin Galactic along with other rocket scientists and futurists who were charged with producing the design.

In orbit docking imminent? Playboy space hotel suites apparently include underdressed ladies. Surprisingly she has no bunny ears or tail. Courtesy: Playboy

In a news release, the design is described by the magazine's Editorial Director, Jimmy Jellinem as: "the ultimate intergalactic entertainment destination," "This heaven in the heavens will exceed starry-eyed travelers' (sic) wildest dreams, and guests will truly experience a party that's out of this world." He added.

The images of the Playboy Club in Space include mock-ups of its zero-gravity dance club, human roulette wheel, and floating drink globules.

The game room has a giant human roulette wheel. Courtesy: Playboy

Apart from being on the Playboy website, the artwork is also to appear in the March issue of the Playboy magazine (presumably featuring in between the pictures of its Earthbound naked ladies). Whether this is, as the MGM film studio might put it: "Ars Gratia Artis" (Art for art's sake), or actually a genuine plan remains to be seen. So far it looks like the former.

Theresa M. Hennessey, Vice President of Public Relations for Playboy Enterprises, Inc. replied to the question in an e-mail: "Thanks for reaching out. The renderings are just a concept at this point, but you never know what the future may hold!" Just in case it has any chance of becoming true, your correspondent would like to make a booking.

A day after completing final assembly of the Ariane 5 rocket and its Automated Transfer Vehicle payload loaded with supplies for the International Space Station, the European Space Agency has decided to delay the scheduled 9 March launch, stating simply: "A routine inspection has concluded that additional measures are required to ensure the maximum readiness."
There is no indication so far of the possible extent of the delay, with ESA simply saying that a new launch date will be announced as soon as possible.
The 9 March slot sits in a relatively narrow window, given the amount of traffic coming and going from the ISS. ESA, for example, could not have delayed for many days the 13 February maiden flight of its new Vega light launcher, for fear of interfering with the ATV mission. ESA's Kourou, French Guiana space centre could cope with nearly simultaneous launches - the rockets fly from adjacent pads - but both missions need the same set of ground stations, including some shipboard receivers that need to be repositioned between the two flights.

Ariane 5's hiccup is not the only launch delay impacting ISS operations. Also this week it has emerged that ESA astronaut André Kuipers will stay on the Station for more than a month longer than originally planned owing to a delay in the launch of the next Soyuz crew ferry.

Routine testing revealed problems in the original Soyuz spacecraft, requiring that it be replaced. The new date for Kuipers and his crewmates to return to Earth is 1 July - by which time he will have been on the Station for over six months. The Soyuz will leave the Station operating with only three crewmembers for a longer period than originally planned. 

Ariane 5 marked its 46th consecutive successful launch during 2011, and the upcoming ISS mission will be the first of seven scheduled for 2012.
This third Automated Transfer Vehicle robotic supply ship - named Edoardo Amaldi after the late Italian physicist considered a pioneer of European spaceflight - is loaded with some 2.5t of dry cargo, water and oxygen, in addition to 5.4t of fuel to power itself and "re-boost" the Station to its full altitude. Another 860kg (1,900lb) of fuel will be carried for transfer to the Russian part of the Station.
ATV-3 will remain attached to the ISS until the end of August when, like its two predecessors, it will undock and de-orbit, burning up in the atmosphere.