Launch News (FAILURE) Progress M-12M, Soyuz-U, August 24, 2011

[garyw]

Do you have a source for that Dive? I'd like to see a citation for that.

I found this earlier which makes for interesting reading:

A few quick thoughts about today’s Progress failure. Russian vehicles and launchers remain highly reliable. Thanks to careful contingency planning, the space station has plenty of supplies. The International Space Station crew is perfectly safe. And there’s every reason to believe the Russians will quickly determine what went wrong and fix it.

That being said….

• Russia has experienced four launch failures in less than nine months, indicating systemic quality control problems within the space industry.
• A similar failure on a human Soyuz flight could injure or kill the crew.
• It could be quite devastating to the ISS program because Soyuz is the only way to reach the station now that the space shuttle is retired.
• The normally reliable Soyuz vehicle has suffered glitches in recent years that have resulted in bone-jarring ballistic re-entries, raising serious questions about safety and quality control.
• Back in March after the first two launch failures, I argued that the Russians were heading for a launch rate this year that was unsustainable. That appears to have been born out.
• Although Roscosmos’ budget has risen, so has the number of projects on its plate, including new launchers, human spacecraft, a new spaceport and providing sole human access to ISS.
• Roscosmos has been heavily criticized this year by high government officials for launch failures, severe delays in delivering spacecraft, and other serious problems.
• Roscosmos Head Anatoly Perminov lost his job earlier this year over these shortcomings.
• Roscosmos’s current leader, Vladimir Popovkin, is now on the hot seat and is under pressure to lower his space agency’s emphasis on human spaceflight.

Source: http://www.parabolicarc.com/2011/08...ints-to-russian-problems-iss-vulnerabilities/

 

[T.Neo]

Chinese spaceships can dock to the ISS because their systems are similar to russian. Actually, they're stollen from Russia.

Incorrect. Chinese spacecraft could theoretically dock to the ISS, but their docking system is supposedly compatible with the APAS on the US side of the station, rather than the Soyuz/Progress/ATV 'probe and cone' docking system found on the Russian segment.

It should be noted that APAS was originally designed by Vladimir Syromyatnikov during the Soviet era. The current APAS differs to the original design, but the heritage is still there somewhat (can't really blame China for stealing it, without blaming the US first).

Shenzhou has a lot of similarity to Soyuz, but AFAIK it has several key differences. That doesn't prevent the possibility of Russian design knowledge getting into Shenzhou somehow ( :shifty: ), and I think that it is quite likely.

 

[Dive]

garyw, i have only a citation from Russian wikipedia

В 2005 году директор ЗАО «ЦНИИМаш-Экспорт» Игорь Решетин и четверо работников этого же ЗАО были арестованы по подозрению в шпионаже в пользу КНР и передаче космических технологий. В 2007 году академик Решетин был приговорён к 11,5 годам заключения в колонии строгого режима[3].

"In 2005 year the head of ZAO "TsNIIMash-Export" Igor' Reshetin and 4 other workers of the same ZAO were arested in suspection of spying for China and illegal exporting the space technologies. In 2007 Reshetin were sentenced for 11 years of jail" sry for my bad english

Also, do you saw the launch of the Shenzhou ? There was a lot of views inside the ship, it looks similar. 100% similar to the Soyuz. Do you saw their Spacesuits ? It's exactly the same as the Soyuz launch and landing "Sokol" suits. Do you know one interesting fact - while the first chinese spacewalk, one of spacewalkers was weared in chinese copy of russian Orlan-M suit. Other one was weared in original russian Orlan-M suit. They had a fear that chinese copy of spacesuit would wreck.
All the chinese cosmonautics is just a copy. It's just like mobile phones. There is a phone and always - a chinese version of the same phone. There is a spaceship - and a chinese version of the spaceship.
However, this is just my opinion. I dont know, maybe our governement want's it to sell technologies to China, maybe they still don't have enough money for their villas and expensive cars.

For now let's just rejoice that the lost spaceship wasn't manned Soyuz.

 

[GigaG]

On Soyuz 18a

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_18a"]Soyuz 18a - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

the crew survived. This seems like a higher altitude Soyuz-18A. However, the progress is designed to burn up and crash.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Are there currently sufficient seats for all 6 ISS crew members to leave the station should the worst happen? I'm not up to date with the current ISS configuration but isn't there only 1 Soyuz available?

 

[T.Neo]

There should always be two Soyuz spacecraft available as escape/contingency return vehicles.

If there aren't, the mission planners are morons... :shifty:

 

[N_Molson]

There should always be two Soyuz spacecraft available as escape/contingency return vehicles.

If there aren't, the mission planners are morons...

Does only the Soyuz-TMAM production rate allow that ?

Because, yes, there are 4 or 5 spacecraft produced each year (don't remember), but they are always sent full up there. There's no room for errors or delays.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Does only the Soyuz-TMAM production rate allow that ?

Because, yes, there are 4 or 5 spacecraft produced each year (don't remember), but they are always sent full up there. There's no room for errors or delays.

According to Wikipedia Soyuz TMA-02M and TMA-21 are currently docked. Six seats home if needed. If they can't get the booster problems resolved by the time TMA-21 has to go home they will have to go back to 3 crew, which they would probably need to do anyway depending on their resupply outlook.

Gosh...now I am worried about one of the docked Soyuz getting damaged by debris or something . What then?

 

[MattBaker]

Is station reboost really a problem? The ISS was in May at roughly 340 km. Now, after 1st July reboost it was at 388 km and is know at a little bit more than 385 km. If it will decrease with 5 km in 2 months (so even more than in the last two months) it is at this 340 kilometers in May 2012.

So it doesn't seem to be a problem to me with the altitude of the station, Progress should fly again in 2012.
Or is anything wrong in my chain of thoughts?

 

[Linguofreak]

Gosh...now I am worried about one of the docked Soyuz getting damaged by debris or something . What then?

Then they'd probably have to send a Soyuz up even if they haven't ascertained the cause of today's failure, and hope nothing goes wrong. Just because they aren't willing to fly normal operations doesn't mean they can't fly emergency operations if necessary.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Is station reboost really a problem? The ISS was in May at roughly 340 km. Now, after 1st July reboost it was at 388 km and is know at a little bit more than 385 km. If it will decrease with 5 km in 2 months (so even more than in the last two months) it is at this 340 kilometers in May 2012.

So it doesn't seem to be a problem to me with the altitude of the station, Progress should fly again in 2012.
Or is anything wrong in my chain of thoughts?

The orbital decay isn't quite linear like this. The lower the ISS orbit becomes, the greater the drag, the faster the orbit decays. Look at the height plot of the ISS over the last year:

http://www.heavens-above.com/IssHeight.aspx?lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=CET

Note that the slope (the rate of decay) generally gets steeper at lower altitude. Solar activity can screw things up too as it changes the density vs. elevation profile of the atmosphere.

All things considered it was probably a very good thing that they recently got a nice big reboost.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Actually, Progress 45 (Progress М-13М, №413) has been shipped from Korolyov to Baikonur yesterday according to the normal flight preparation procedure. At the regular pace, on-site operations before launch would take 40 days. Hopefully, the booster problem can be addressed during this time.

In addition, Roscosmos is obliged under current ISS related international agreements to have another Progress vehicle flight ready in 45 days after a loss of some.

 

[SiberianTiger]

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20110825/166148734.html

State of emergency lifted after Russian spacecraft crash

09:48 25/08/2011
GORNO-ALTAISK, August 25 (RIA Novosti)

A state of emergency imposed after a Russian space freighter fell to Earth in Siberia’s Altai Republic has been lifted in the region.

The Progress M-12M space freighter was lost after failing to separate from the Soyuz-U carrier rocket on Wednesday. A rocket engine failure is believed to have caused the accident, the first of its type in the history of Russia’s space industry.

“The state of emergency was imposed…when we were not aware exactly where the fragments had fallen,” said Sergei Volodchenko, deputy head of the Choya district.

“Now we have determined that the fragments only fell in the Choya district,” he said, adding that the district remained on high alert.

Fragments from Russian rockets launched from the Baikonur space centre in nearby Kazakhstan have been falling on the Altai Republic for decades. Experts estimate that some 2.5 tons of space waste have fallen on the republic in total.

 

[Wishbone]

2.5 tons? or maybe 2.5 thousand tonnes?

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

In the mean time, take a look at yesterday's culprit:

 

[SiberianTiger]

In the mean time, take a look at yesterday's culprit:http://www.youtube.com/v/Y6U4yj8nB8Q&feature=channel_video_title

The guy in blue shirt with pliers or the guy in white shirt with a screwdriver? :lol:

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Just made a launch simulation with Nikita's Soyuz add-on, and as you can see with this playback of the launch on Google Earth, the reports of rocket debris in the Altai Republic would fit exactly with a shutdown of the third stage engine at T+325 seconds (I have the nominal crash site of the third stage and the payload at just south of Teletskoye Lake, and would roughly fit the description that the crash site is 40-50 kilometers from the village of Karakoksha).

Link

 

[SiberianTiger]

Just made a launch simulation with Nikita's Soyuz add-on, and as you can see with this playback of the launch on Google Earth, the reports of rocket debris in the Altai Republic would fit exactly with a shutdown of the third stage engine at T+325 seconds (I have the nominal crash site of the third stage and the payload at just south of Teletskoye Lake, and would roughly fit the description that the crash site is 40-50 kilometers from the village of Karakoksha).

Link

It's a very rough fit, to my taste. The reports were the crash site was no further than 40 km from Bizhelbyk village in Altai Republic (86.55E, 51.62N), while on your map the farthest debris deposit point is at 90.05E, 51.18N, which is 250 km away, in territory of adjacent Tuva Republic.

Perhaps, the message about shutdown at T+325 was bogus, or the engine did not perform well before it was sent a shut down command.

Interesting is that Block A (core stage) impact point at 87.13E, 50.83N is much closer to the reported crash site, just 95 km off to the right.

 

[IronRain]

Cargo Craft Lost After Launch

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

It's a very rough fit, to my taste. The reports were the crash site was no further than 40 km from Bizhelbyk village in Altai Republic (86.55E, 51.62N), while on your map the farthest debris deposit point is at 90.05E, 51.18N, which is 250 km away, in territory of adjacent Tuva Republic.

Perhaps, the message about shutdown at T+325 was bogus, or the engine did not perform well before it was sent a shut down command.

Interesting is that Block A (core stage) impact point at 87.13E, 50.83N is much closer to the reported crash site, just 95 km off to the right.

Well there are many variables with this rough simulation:

1. I don't think Throton's launch auto-pilot is exactly accurate: for example, it pitches the third stage down to a pitch of -10 degrees just after 3rd stage ignition; this would certainly not happen in real life scenarios! (for reference, when I did a manual shutdown at T+325 seconds the ground speed was ~4380 m/s and the altitude was ~203 km)

2. In this simulation, the third stage and the Progress craft disintegrated at an altitude of ~35 km. In real cases I would think it would burn up into pieces at a higher altitude (perhaps at ~60 km), which would put the crash site somewhat west of what was implied here (a range error of ~200 km sounds about right).

3. As you said, the announced time of 325 seconds after launch does not necessarily means that the rocket was functioning normally for 325 seconds. It could simply mean that ground controllers noticed something was wrong and issued the emergency warning at T+325 seconds.

Thus, since there are so many uncertainties with this little experiment, I think it does a pretty good job of estimating the time of failure.