from the adequately-explained-by-incompetence dept.
El Reg reports
Russian aerospace firm's kit fails on 46th mission
The embarrassing incident that two of Europe's Galileo satnav craft [landed] in the wrong orbit has been attributed to "a shortcoming in the system thermal analysis performed during stage design" for the launch [vehicle] Fregat's fourth stage, built by Russian aerospace outfit NPO Lavochkin.
As we reported back in August, two [failures] meant two Gallileo sats landed in the wrong orbit, causing much hand-wringing at the European Space Agency. The mess was later blamed on a software bug.
But Arianspace, the commercial launch operator that sent the birds aloft, now says that wasn't the case and that the mission's fourth stage was built to fail.
An internal investigation found that the three stages of the Soyuz launcher all performed as expected. But Fregat struck problems "at the beginning of the ballistic phase preceding the second ignition of this stage".
[...]failure was due to a temporary interruption of the joint hydrazine propellant supply to these [two attitude control] thrusters.
The interruption in the flow was caused by freezing of the hydrazine.
The freezing resulted from the proximity of hydrazine and cold helium feed lines, these lines being connected by the same support structure, which acted as a thermal bridge.
[...]sounds a bit like someone didn't properly account for how cold the launch vehicle would get, which froze its fuel, which in turn meant the rockets didn't fire enough or soon enough to get the satellites into the desired orbit.
This reminds me of the Space Shuttle that had been launched successfully many times, then in 1986 some suit at NASA decided that manufacturer's thermal specs for components didn't really matter.
Remember Feynman's glass of ice water?
Related:
Related Stories
The European Space Agency's (ESA's) embarrassment at having two of its Galileo satnav birds land in the wrong orbit has been blamed on bad programming of the Soyuz craft that hauled the satellites aloft. Russia's Izviestia reports that an investigation of the incident found that the Soyuz's first stage did all that was asked of it. So did the second stage, but that vehicle had been programmed incorrectly.
[Izviestia reports]: http://izvestia.ru/news/575880 [In Russian]
[Google Translation]: https://translate.google.co.in/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fizvestia.ru%2Fnews%2F575880&edit-text=
Over at spacenews there is a report on an Israeli startup, called Effective Space Solutions which is proposing to use a microsatellite with an Ion drive to salvage the currently stranded Galileo satellites, as well as to provide extended lifespans for current satellites.
The 250-kilogram DeOrbiter, using ion-electric propulsion, is designed to perform multiple missions — more than 20, the company says — attaching and detaching from target satellites before being retired.
...
While the Galileo orbit-injection failure allowed EFS to ride a publicity wave, the principal mission of DeOrbiter is to extend the life of otherwise healthy satellites, mainly in geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers over the equator, where commercial telecommunications satellites operate.
Interestingly it also looks like the company also has several competitors eyeing the robotic recovery and rescue of in-orbit satellites as a viable business.
Full Story at over at Spacenews.com
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 20 2014, @05:12PM
Talk to a chemist about ideal gas laws first.
I'd want to see the data first before drawing conclusions. All I've seen is PR press release BS conclusions and a lot of wild speculation but no real data.
However, you take 4000 psi "anything" and drop its pressure and the temp will collapse. The problem is likely not the local weather at time of launch.. they've done this kind of thing before you know. Helium pressurization is not exactly a new idea, since like the 40s or 50s anyway.
One way to blow down a tank at a crazy rate faster than you can heat it up is blasting a thruster like crazy. You know, like if the software has gone nuts or there's a flight anomaly and you're way off course but the thruster is bravely trying to fix it anyway, at least till it runs out of fuel or freezes itself.
Thats another "engineering elegant" way to "fix" the problem, just use thermal mass ratios such that the hydrazine can't freeze until the tank is about 99% empty. Then you can blame the failure on frozen hydrazine and not on running out of fuel which was the real problem. At least you won't spend time money and materials on too much hydrazine heating. Still not really the root cause of the problem, but getting closer.
Another interesting way to fail would be some delta early in the launch (something fell off? Insane wind gust? Space aliens? Software bug?) and a massive thruster correction later and you're back on course, meanwhile icy helium starts its work... And the thrusters stay offline for awhile, long enough for the lines to freeze, because everything is going so well. Such that next time you need to fire.... whoops, frozen solid. If the ride were a little rough needing a little more correction, then the flow rate would have been high enough to prevent freezing, but noooo
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 20 2014, @06:51PM
Why do both bottom links fail?
https://soylentnews.org/mainpage/14/08/29/1833258mode.shtml#articles [soylentnews.org]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 20 2014, @07:06PM
Proper links are
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/08/29/1833258 [soylentnews.org]
and
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/08/31/0530223 [soylentnews.org]
respectivly.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @07:29PM
I have tried repeatedly to include S/N links in summaries such that Google et al will cache pages that have an expanded view containing lots and lots of comments.
The editors have repeatedly borked those links.
The editors don't seem to care a whit about folks being able to easily find applicable S/N pages via a search engine.
The original links were actually
http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/08/29/1833258&mode=nested#articles [soylentnews.org]
http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/08/31/0530223&mode=nested#articles [soylentnews.org]
(Having them down here in the comments with nofollow tags attached does not accomplish the intended meme.)
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Monday October 20 2014, @07:42PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @08:19PM
the google spiders will find the entire thread
Give that a try. Pull up one of their Cached pages and see what they have found.
You will find that your assumption is COMPLETELY WRONG.
People who have accounts and use COOKIES on this site make a lot of assumptions.
Those assumptions do not hold up for non-members (like Google).
.
I had already started a comment which I had entitled Got me on a roll now and will add it here.
Sometimes an editor will remove the extra parameters I have PURPOSELY added to the URL and will substitute a &tid= parameter.
I find that parameter to be pretty useless.
It indicates what subject heading was originally used by the submitter--useful only if one knows how to decipher those from numbers to topics (which, I'm betting, NO ONE does).
At least the &tid= change doesn't make the URL unusable.
...then there are the editors who not only change the URL, but turn it into junk.
(I've seen mode jammed into the end of the URL previously.)
Google's spiders DO NOT use cookies.
For them to find/cache anything that isn't the **simplest** presentation of pages on this site (only root comments plus **titles** of child comments--unless those child comments have a high score), -you- have to make a URL that -explicitly- states what you want them to find.
I do that--but my efforts are thwarted by clumsy|uncaring|uninformed editors.
I do wish those individuals would change their ways.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Monday October 20 2014, @11:31PM
Me: the google spiders will find the entire thread
You Quote: Give that a try. Pull up one of their Cached pages and see what they have found.
You will find that your assumption is COMPLETELY WRONG.
People who have accounts and use COOKIES on this site make a lot of assumptions.
Those assumptions do not hold up for non-members (like Google).
---------------
Cached pages have nothing to do with what the spiders find. NOTHING!
I took your advice, I found a phrase that occured in a thread from yesterday.
it was like three replies deep way down in the thread.
Went to a different computer all together. (wife's) Launched a totally different browser.
Turned to private/incognito mode, searched for that phrase,
put the phrase in quotes, and hit search.
It brought up the entire Story, and all posts.
I suggest you have no clue what cookies actually do. They certainly don't affect how Google indexes the site.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21 2014, @01:54AM
I found a phrase that [occurred] in a thread from yesterday.
it was like three replies deep way down in the thread
A link to the Cache you found would have been the proof, one way or the other.
I'm betting you found something containing a small number of comments--NOT the WHOLE page.
Back when I looked for things I knew were on the other site, I could easily get a Cache of the ENTIRE page.
THAT is what is difficult with this site and its use of cookies to fashion a page to each user's preference.
The defaults are designed for impatient humans.
The defaults suck for search engines.
Cached pages have nothing to do with what the spiders find
As I already said, you are completely wrong.
The Cache is an exact duplicate of what Google found.
If you are clicking on the main link, you haven't followed instructions and have proved NOTHING.
...especially on a box that has a COOKIE set for this site.
different computer [altogether][...]brought up the entire Story, and all posts.
Again, a link to the Cache that you found would have been proof of your claim.
Again, without COOKIES, even clicking Google's main link, you will see a bunch of titles but few actual comments.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Saturday November 01 2014, @08:26PM
You are totally ignorant of how google indexes pages.
They do not cache the entire internet. That would be impossible.
I can't send you a cache example because that is not how google works.
The crawl the net, with thousands of machines and write indexes of words and phrases to huge database
and the list of urls that contained those words and phrases. The spiders don't only search web pages, they also search ftp sites. Everyone who has ever seen a web server log will see googlebot server crawls.
When you search and click on a hit, it takes you to the then-current version of the page.
I can not believe, at your age, you have been laboring under such a totally mistaken concept of how google and every other web search works.
Finish your education here: http://www.googleguide.com/google_works.html [googleguide.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21 2014, @04:06AM
You may not be aware but the submission/editing portion of slash code is retarded and clocks up submissions all by itself.
(Score: 2) by Nr_9 on Monday October 20 2014, @09:19PM
It struck me at the time this happened that it was unwise to use a Russian launch vehicle to launch an EU strategic asset like Galileo. This only underlines this. Even if the error was not intentional, I would imagine that there is little incentive for Russian workers to diligently do their work on launch vehicles that will weaken Russian military capabilities by increasing EU capabilities. (Military power, unlike economic power, is very much a zero sum game.)
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday October 21 2014, @10:19AM
That's what I thought initially too, when I read they commissioned Russians to do the job.
But then, it would be stupid to boycott the launch this way. It would be better to deploy it with a remote controlled addon that sabotages the sat when it is necessary.
Account abandoned.