PARIS — Eutelsat Chief Executive Michel de Rosen on Nov. 24 said he remains confident that investigators will find the cause of the propulsion-system failure on Eutelsat’s W3B telecommunications satellite. But he conceded that, one month after the failure, the inquiry is still searching for a smoking gun.
“We are lucky in the sense that, unlike some other satellite failures, we have been able to isolate the problem in the propulsion system,” de Rosen said here during the “Space Perspectives 2011” conference organized by Euroconsult and the French aerospace industries association, Gifas.
“The chief technical officer of Eutelsat is on the board of inquiry, as is the chief technical officer of Thales Alenia Space, the manufacturer. The board also includes the presence of Astrium, the builder of the propulsion system, and of Arianespace, the launch services provider, to provide [launch] metrics,” he said. “I do believe there will be a clear explanation, but we need to let them work a little longer.”
W3B developed a leak in its oxidizer tank that became so serious in the minutes after launch that the satellite could neither be raised into a proper retirement orbit nor sent on a guided descent into the Pacific Ocean. It is expected to spend several decades in the same highly elliptical transfer orbit in which it was left following separation from the Ariane 5 ECA rocket after launch.
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