On Wednesday night, an Ariane 5 booster took off from Kourou, a launch site in French Guiana operated by a European rocket company. The launch proceeded normally until shortly before nine minutes and 26 seconds into the flight, when ground tracking stations lost contact with the rocket. It was feared that the launch vehicle and its two satellites were lost.
But later Wednesday night, and again on Thursday, both of the satellite operators, SES and Eutelsat, separately confirmed that they were in contact with their respective spacecraft, the SES-14 satellite and the Al Yah 3 satellite. They were not in their proper geostationary orbits, but that could be fixed, the satellite companies said.
Just how far off those orbits became clear publicly later on Thursday, when data about them started appearing in satellite trackers. According to one orbital expert, Jonathan McDowell, each of the satellites had reached near the 45,000km heights where they need to be, but the inclinations were way off.
[...] "I characterize this as a major anomaly, but I score it a partial success for launch vehicle statistics," McDowell said. "The orbit is usable but will require several years worth of satellite station-keeping propellant to get the payloads to the right final orbit." This is obviously preferable to losing the satellites entirely.
Source: ArsTechnica
See also:
http://spacenews.com/breaking-ariane-5-loses-contact-with-ground-control-after-upper-stage-ignition/
http://spacenews.com/satellites-placed-into-incorrect-orbits-by-ariane-5-can-be-recovered-owners-say/
Previously: NASA's GOLD Makes It Into Orbit After Fears It Was Lost
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday January 29 2018, @06:39PM (2 children)
What's up with all the weird launch mess-ups of late?
Most are being blamed on second stages doing weird things.
The Russian launch, from the wrong spaceport [theguardian.com] not only lost its principal payload, but also 18 other smaller packages for an assortment of countries.
And of course nobody know if Zuma is really lost or not. [theverge.com]
You'd think someone/thing doesn't want these satellites reaching orbit.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday January 29 2018, @06:57PM (1 child)
Conspiracy theory: X-51 program ended officially, successfully, in 2013, and I'm just saying that the zuma "failure" would be a delicious trajectory for a theoretical classified X-52 or X-WTF program.
Why would you launch something like that on top of a civilian rocket? Well, the spacex guys famously like reusable stuff like boosters than return home and land, maybe the proposed X-WTF landed safely somewhere for reuse and the AF likes the idea of civie boosters for a longer term X-WTF program.
Another oddity, from memory X-51 was never much classified so why be all secret about the X-52 or X-WTF or whatever its called? Maybe its a parallel project with X-51 in public and X-52 in private. Probably would be good for disinfo in the early stages of the program. I suppose you could slush fund the X-WTF via embedded funds for the X-51 project.
Still, its a delicious conspiracy theory, oh so tasty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @08:08PM
So, did the supposed orbit pass close to Area 51 or China Lake?