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posted by janrinok on Friday December 29 2017, @05:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the did-I-program-that...? dept.

Russia Blames Human Error for Loss of Angolan Satellite

Russia's recent rocket launch was programmed with the wrong point of origin:

The loss of a multi-million pound weather mapping satellite was due to programming errors, the Russian deputy prime minister has said. Dmitry Rogozin said Meteor-M had been programmed for take-off from a different space station.

Speaking to Russian state TV, he blamed "human error". "The rocket was programmed as if it was taking off from Baikonur," he told the Rossyia 24 TV channel.

In fact the rocket was actually taking off from new base Vostochny, in the east of the country.

Angola Loses Contact With First Commercial Satellite

AngoSat-1, a communications satellite built for almost $300m, was launched on Tuesday evening from the launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

It was scheduled to work for 15 years and was made to improve telecommunications in the African country. About 50 Angolan aerospace engineers were trained around the world. This crew was supposed to oversee mission from a control centre in Angola.

Earlier this year, Angola made public its long-term plan for its space programme, which envisages a steady expansion in the coming years. It is unclear how a failure of AngoSat-1 will influence that multi-year plan.

Also at Reuters.


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday December 29 2017, @06:40PM (3 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Friday December 29 2017, @06:40PM (#615599) Journal

    Pretty sure you don't get to launch a satellite in Russia with your own programming.

    Knowing next to nothing about rocket science, I don't see why this should be a fatal error. The orbit might be wrong, but might be correctable with a lot of fuel wastage. Unless the boosters shut down prematurely, you would think it would just clime to orbit and give Madagascar a new weather sat.

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  • (Score: 2) by legont on Friday December 29 2017, @07:05PM

    by legont (4179) on Friday December 29 2017, @07:05PM (#615609)

    Not implying anything, but typically rockets launched by responsible nations have self destruct procedures for serious off-course errors.

    As per the Angola's one, Ukraine-Russia cooperation (as in first stage - second stage) sounds like a bad idea at the moment.

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  • (Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Friday December 29 2017, @07:06PM

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Friday December 29 2017, @07:06PM (#615610)

    Lesser problems have been fatal errors - there's the explosion of Ariane 5 for example, you may know it (its the one with the overflow bug that lead to it exploding), but here's a write-up: https://www.around.com/ariane.html [around.com]

    Presumably this one was a less dramatic failure, though.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @07:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 29 2017, @07:20PM (#615616)

    > The orbit might be wrong...

    Latitude matters -- the ground speed due to earth's rotation makes up part of the final orbital velocity.
    Is that enough of a clue?