Launch News (Rest-d?) GEO-IK-2 (Mousson-2, Cosmos-2470) atop Rockot/Briz-KM on February 1st, 2011

[Wishbone]

The number of idiots seems to increase out of proportion. The worrisome trend is that they want to dumb down and destroy the education... and in the end there'll be more of that cave thinking.

 

[N_Molson]

Yeah, to start with they don't even know what's a rocket... They would make a better use of their free time playing Orbiter !

 

[IronRain]

You know, someone should make a Rockot add-on... :lol:

 

[RisingFury]

One can be at least pleased that the first two stages worked... Helps to extend the warranty...

I'm not sure the boss will be happy with the "first two stages worked" statement... not this time.

 

[Wishbone]

Happiness (of a boss) is a warm rocket... The boss is virtual, by the look of things, and is probably more concerned with ordering a pack of camels than with radar-mapping sats.

 

[PeterRoss]

Now they say it's not too many chances that there be enough fuel to get the sat into circular orbit and they rather will practice some orbital maneuvres with this piece of equipment and then burn it in the atmosphere. On the first look it seems like they too don't know if the sat have enough dV and just want to try and see. Maybe we can advice them to use Orbiter instead?

 

[SiberianTiger]

Maybe we can advice them to use Orbiter instead?

What's to do with it? To model a possibility of a gravity boost with the ISS as the reference body? :lol:

 

[PeterRoss]

What's to do with it? To model a possibility of a gravity boost with the ISS as the reference body? :lol:

Well if it's a spececraft3 vessel they can tweak abit its ISP... but if it's .dll-based they should ask developer for some sources...

 

[SiberianTiger]

http://news.mail.ru/society/5255514/

Failed launch of Rockot may affect Russian launch schedule
Feb 3, 2011, 14:20

Launches of Rockot and Proton-M rockets scheduled for the end of March may be postponed due to launch failure of geodesy satellite Geo-IK-2 atop Rockot LV, said a source in rocket and space industry.

"Briz-M and Briz-KM upper stages which are used, respectively, at Proton-M and Rockot launch vehicles, use identical sets of engines. Since the abnormal situation which occurred during Geo-IK-2 satellite's launch happened during the upper stage's active phase, it may be called for to hold usage of these upper stages for the period of investigation".

The source noted that on March, 29th, a launch of Rockot rocket with Briz-KM upper stage and four Russian satellites in Plesetsk is planned, and on March, 31st, a Proton-M LV with Briz-M booster should double shoot American SES-3 and Kazakh Kazsat-2 communication satellites.

 

[SiberianTiger]

http://www.interfax.ru/news.asp?id=179394

Military Satellite Geo-IK-2 has failed after working for three weeks.

March 1, 2011; 9:20 MSK

Moscow, March 1. INTERFAX.RU - Military geodesic satellite Geo-IK-2 that was delivered to an abnormal orbit bu rocket launch on February, 1st, has failed shortly before reaching a month long real lifetime, said INTERFAX a source from the Military this Tuesday.

According to him, problems with the spacecraft have begun in the middle of the past week. Then, a solar-pointing control of Geo-IK-2 stopped working. Unfortunately, specialists could not restore the working state of the spacecraft's systems, and it is now lost.

 

[Wishbone]

Wonder if this is an indication of an extra failure facepalm, or just the consequence of randomly staring at the Sun because of attitude problems earlier.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Wonder if this is an indication of an extra failure facepalm, or just the consequence of randomly staring at the Sun because of attitude problems earlier.

Some people at NK forum are blaming "Sensor 334K". knows what does it mean. :blink: They say that more recent Glonass-K is also equipped with the same thing...

 

[Wishbone]

http://www.iss-reshetnev.ru/images/File/magazin/2008/m5-screen.pdf

It is a coarse Sun sensor made by OAO NPP-Geofizika-Kosmos, FOV 90x182 deg, mass 0.9 kg, accuracy 1.5 deg.

Could be hardware, could be a mix of hardware and erroneous ground input to blame...

 

[SiberianTiger]

Oh, and by the way, it was named Cosmos-2470.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Could be hardware, could be a mix of hardware and erroneous ground input to blame...

Now it looks like the latter:

http://www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=717420#717420

keeping the text for history:

с СОСом всё было нормально, ориентация поддерживалась, проводились работы по исследованию ПЗВ, ПОСы работали штатно.
Посе перехода в закрытый режим который оттягивали всеми способами перестала поступать ТМИ, управлялся в слепую (просто включали передатчик и телеметрию и выключали), в это время один из НИПов по каким то (пока неизвестным) причинам выдавал на борт инвертированные коды команд (на включение ТМИ и отключение передатчика), в результате были включены аварийный и начальный режимы ориентации, реализуемые разными устройствами. В результате возникшего конфликта аппарат потерял ориентацию на Солнце и очень сильно закрутился. На последнем сеансе , косячным НИПом, борт ушел с включенным передатчиком, который окончательно посадил аккумуляторы. Теперь он скорее всего замерз к чертям и если иногда Солнышко черпает то передатчик тут же всё просаживает. В данный момент ведутся контрольные сеансы в надежде что он выйдет на связь как недавно Глонасс 15 но ИМХО - бесполезно, ибо по данным опоры он слишком быстро крутится

translation:

The Sun tracker sensor was okay, and attitude had been kept. We've been studying star tracker orientation capabilities, and sun-tracker was doing its job. After going to secure comms mode which we tried to defer for as late as possible (but it did happen), telemetry stop feeding and the sat went to "blind" control mode. It was supposed to switch transmitter and telemetry and then switch off at times. Unfortunately, one of the ground stations have sent bit-inverted commands up there (commanding that transmitter on/off), we don't know why, yet. This resulted in kicking in falling back to emergency and initial attitude keeping at once, and these two modes are provides by outputs of different devices. The conflict resulted in the spacecraft loosing Sun-facing attitude and severe rotation. At the end of the faluty comm session with that ground station, the transmitter was left on, which quickly depleted batteries. Now it's probably frozen as hell, and even if it occasionally feeds on sunlight, the transmitter immediately fiddles away every watt gathered.

At the moment we keep maintaining open transmissions in hope it would eventually establish communications, like GLONASS #15 lately, but, IMHO, that's useless, because optical tells us it's rotating very fast.

 

[Wishbone]

Aieee... Just how many times have I heard this story before? For goodness sake, we are talking about error correction codes, fault tree analysis etc. My hunch would be that with the sat already declared a write-off, complacency crept up.

 

[SiberianTiger]

One more sweet picture sequence delivered by Elektro-L. Watch the full day's cycle in GEO!

 

[Wishbone]

Comms re-established! Source: Space Forces PAO via Interfax.

Russian-language story here: http://www.rian.ru/science/20110422/367268179.html

 

[SiberianTiger]

Comms re-established! Source: Space Forces PAO via Interfax.

Russian-language story here: http://www.rian.ru/science/20110422/367268179.html

Unfortunately, they aren't saying they can use it for the intended purpose.

 

[SiberianTiger]

http://interfax.ru/print.asp?id=196668

Military Geodesic satellite GEO-IK-2 has been declared a complete writeoff despite successful establishing of communications to it last April. "All attempts to bring the satellite's systems to life were faulty" - said a source in rocket and space industry.

On related note, http://mysouth.su/2011/06/the-deput...nded-for-mistakes-in-building-the-satellites/

The deputy head of Russian Federal Space Agency reprimanded for mistakes in building the satellites
Posted On Monday, June 27, 2011 By Russian Opinion. Under Progress Tags: Progress

Deputy Head of Federal Space Agency Anatoly Shilov was reprimanded by the government for the mistakes when you create multiple spacecraft. The corresponding order cabinet was published in the bank regulatory and administrative acts, RIA Novosti reported. Available refers to disruption of satellite launch "Meridian", "Condor" and "Geo-IR." -Series "Condor" are intended to produce images of the earth's surface high resolution. Satellites "Meridian" and "Geo-IR" – is the military apparatus. The first is used for communications between ships, aircraft and ground bases, while the latter are necessary for the geodetic measurements of high accuracy. The current pronunciation is not the first to Shilov. In May 2011, such an administrative measure has been applied to several officials of rocket-space industry. In addition, five people were released from their positions. The reason was the failure of sanctions Roskosmos defense contracts in 2010 – he was not executed by 30 percent.