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
Related Stories
NASA's Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) instrument, which will study how solar activity affects Earth's upper atmosphere, was launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket and is attached to a commercial satellite. However, GOLD was briefly feared lost along with the two satellites that were launched, until communications were established and it was found that the satellites had been deployed in lower-than-expected orbits:
A brief tracking failure led to fears that the satellite meant to host NASA's new mission to better understand space weather had been lost, according to SpaceFlightNow. Though the European Ariane 5 rocket carrying the satellite lifted off uneventfully, none of the customers with spacecraft on the rocket could reach their probes for some time.
The satellites are in orbit now and have communicated with their control centers, Arianespace announced, but it looks like the rocket deployed the satellites into less than ideal orbits. "The mission experienced some challenges during the launch stages which resulted in the Al Yah 3 satellite being inserted into an orbit that differed from the flight plan," Yahsat, a satellite communications company whose Al Yah 3 vehicle was on the rocket, said in a statement. "However, the satellite is healthy and operating nominally."
The other customer, Luxembourg-based operator SES, also confirmed that its satellite, SES-14, went into a lower orbit than planned but is operating just fine. SES-14 is hosting an instrument called GOLD, which is the first NASA mission to consist of an instrument living on a commercial company's satellite. Both SES and Yahsat say they will figure out a way for the satellites to course-correct in order to get to their originally planned orbits and do their jobs.
An Ariane 5 rocket is scheduled to launch the James Webb Space Telescope in 2019.
Also at the University of Colorado Boulder and Newsweek.
Previously: NASA's GOLD Mission to Study the Upper Atmosphere Using a Commercial Satellite
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @06:38PM
Evil Russian hackers have shifted Earth around while no one was looking! So says the Ukrainian CIA...
(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?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday January 29 2018, @06:48PM (1 child)
That is indeed a major malfunction. Thats in the class of major programming design or assembly error, not just some decimal point was wrong.
Hmm third state IMU aligned to the wrong yaw value so it went off in the correct distance but wrong direction?
I'm just saying, its easy for amateurs to F up orbital altitudes, but screwing up inclination takes a professional.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday January 29 2018, @07:05PM
You haven't seen me killing Kerbals, have you, lol.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday January 29 2018, @06:58PM (2 children)
Ran on Friday already: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/01/26/1752250 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday January 29 2018, @07:13PM (1 child)
The SES-14 satellite and the Al Yah 3 satellite ARE NOT Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) satellite.
These are not the failed satellites you were looking for.
So NOT Dupe.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Monday January 29 2018, @07:20PM
Bit of reading perhaps ?
Friday's TFS:
Not to mention that Ariane 5 didn't take off twice in three days ... Dupe.