SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
(Score: 5, Informative) by EETech1 on Friday December 29 2017, @10:30PM
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/zenit-angosat-launch.html [russianspaceweb.com]
It appears they have been able to re-establish communications with ANGOSAT-1!
From the above link:
During most of the day on December 28, the efforts to contact Angosat-1 continued and in the evening Moscow Time, the official TASS news agency reported that flight controllers had received telemetry from the spacecraft. This fact was also confirmed by the Angolan government. Soon thereafter, TASS quoted industry sources as saying that the communications could had initially been disrupted due to draining of the spacecraft's batteries, but, fortunately, Angosat-1 had already deployed its solar panels, which allowed to restore the power supply. Obviously, such a scenario provides no explanation how the spacecraft ended up with drained batteries and why such an obvious problem could not be avoided.
On December 29, RKK Energia, the satellite manufacturer, also confirmed that the communications with the Angosat-1 had been restored, adding that the telemetry received from the spacecraft showed all the parameters of onboard systems had been normal. Around the same time, industry sources said that the spacecraft was receiving commands and sending telemetry back, thus maintaining two-way communications with ground control.