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Aviation History
2004
2004-02 - 0027.PDF
SPACEFLIGHT EXPLORATION GRAHAM WARWICK / WASHINGTON DC NASA tells Mars Spirit to head for hills via crater Agency analyses touchdown to plan for landing of second rover on Red Planet this Sunday NASA is to aim its first Mars expedi tion rover, Spirit, at a nearby crater before sending the robotic vehicle towards a distant range of hills. Spirit rolled off its lander on 15 January, 12 days after it touched down in Gusev Crater. The last cable connecting the rover to its lander was severed on 12 January, freeing Spirit to per form a three-stage, 115° clockwise pirouette to align with an unob structed exit ramp. Efforts to retract sections of deflated landing airbag potentially blocking the ramp that the rover had planned to use failed. Spirit drove 3m in 78s on the Martian surface, ending up 80cm from the foot of the egress ramp. It will head for a shallow depression about 250m (820ft) to the north east, with stops en route to sample soil and rocks in search of evidence that Gusev was once a lake. Scientists hope to find subsurface rocks ejected from the 200m-wide target crater. NASA then plans to aim Spirit towards the East Hills Complex, a range of hills rising about 100m above the plain. The hills are 3km (2 miles) from the landing site, about five times the distance the rover was planned to travel during its 90-day mission. But getting closer to the hills will improve the detail pro vided by Spirit's panoramic camera and infrared spectrometer. Based on analysis of Spirit's touchdown, NASA is fine-tuning plans for the 25 January landing of the second rover, Opportunity. TESTING MAX KINGSLEY-JONES / MOJAVE SpaceShipOne undergoes repairs Scaled Composites is not making any changes to its SpaceShipOne after the suborbital vehicle suffered a gear collapse at the end of its last flight on 17 December, which the company says was a result of a "hard landing". The three-seat SpaceShipOne began glide tests in August, after being released from the White Knight mothership, and went supersonic on the 17 December test, the first in which its hybrid rocket motor was ignited, reaching a speed of Mach 1.2. The aircraft ultimately will be flown at M4. Scaled Composites founder and president Burt Rutan says he is "absolutely delighted" with the way the first supersonic test went, despite the eventful landing. "Bad things that could have happened during the flight didn't. The tran sonic acceleration and deceleration were very smooth; we didn't have any [aerodynamic] 'buzz'." Rutan attributes the collapse of the left main leg to a hard landing by test pilot Brian Binnie. "We didn't manage to get a lot of evalu ation of a recent modification to the flight controls, prior to the fir ing of the rocket motor. We'd intro duced some viscous damping to the elevons to eliminate antici pated buzz at transonic speed. "During the landing, Brian was concerned that he had different handling with the new damping," says Rutan, adding that as a result the pilot failed to flare and the landing was harder than planned. SpaceShipOne is undergoing minor repairs after the landing mishap at Scaled Composites' Mojave, California plant. Rutan declines to say when the next flight is scheduled. H2A FAILURE The November failure of a Japanese H2A rocket was caused by a hole burned though the nozzle of a booster, which prevented pyrotechnic separation. ISS PRESSURE A braided hose will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) on a Progress tanker next week to replace the one suspected of causing a pressure loss. SATELLITE Loral Skynet suffers setback One of two solar arrays on Loral Skynet's Telstar 14/Estrela do Sul communications satellite failed to deploy fully after its 10 January launch by Boeing Sea Launch Zenit 3SL booster from a platform in the mid-Pacific. If available corrective actions to complete deployment fail, satel lite power will be reduced. The Loral-built spacecraft is insured for $250 million. CO-OPERATION Russia and Kazakhstan extend space deal Russia and Kazakhstan have signed a package of agreements on space co-operation. On 9 January, presidents Vladimir Putin and Nursultan Nazarbayev signed an extension of the Russian lease on the Baikonur cosmodrome to 2050. The agreement extends the initial deal struck in December 1994, when Russia was given a 20-year lease on the site for $115 million a year in rent and the obligation to spend another $50 million annu ally to keep the infrastructure intact, writes Vladimir Karnozov. The deal keeps the same financial parameters, but Russia wants to revise the terms. In a bid to put pressure on Kazakhstan, Russia threatened to move all military launches to the Plesetsk and Svobodny cosmodromes within its own territory, starting in 2005, and some commercial launches to Plesetsk and Kourou, French Guiana as soon as new launch pads for the Angara and Soyuz boosters are completed. Baikonur has 15 pads for Tsyklon, Energia, Molniya, Proton, Rokot, Soyuz, Tsyklon and Zenit launch vehicles, half of them not operational. The cos modrome launches all manned and unmanned flights to the International Space Station, and the majority of commercial flights, including Russia's most commer cially successful booster, the Proton, flights on which are mar keted by Lockheed Martin-led International Launch Services. A second agreement has been signed covering develop ment of Kazakhstan's first communications satellite by Russia's Khrunichev. The televi sion-broadcast and data-communications satellite, based on the Yakhta spacecraft bus, is due for launch from Baikonur in 2005. Khrunichev emerged as the winner after Kazakhstan studied proposals from France's Alcatel Space and four Russian bidders. www.flightinternational.com FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 20-26 JANUARY 2004 25
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