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Space Science

Solar Sail Launch Failure Confirmed 431

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-it-would-have-been-real-cool dept.
Creedo writes "Russian space officials announced today that the yesterday's solar sail vehicle launch has indeed failed."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Solar Sail Launch Failure Confirmed More

Solar Sail Launch Failure Confirmed

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  • i'm sorry (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:29AM (#12881772)
    in soviet russia, solar sails fail you.

    i didnt want to do this, but i had to. i dont know why.

    i'm so sorry. all i've ever wanted was to be loved
  • Let's say this happened in the US. The entire project would be shitcanned and study after study would be performed to show why and how the rocket exploded. Then it would be years before another rocket was sent up.

    Meanwhile, the Russians dust themselves off and prepare the next launch vehicle for the earliest possible sendup of the sail.

    We go to the moon in this decade... The space race was won by people with drive and ambition. These days NASA is full of over-educated monkeys who cringe at their own sh

    • Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:35AM (#12881840)
      Well this is an unmanned satilight. No one was hurt (physiclally). In the issue of the shuttle deaths need to be minimized. Because every death in space makes people fear space travel.

    • Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up (Score:5, Informative)

      by Monkey-Man2000 ( 603495 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:37AM (#12881856)
      Except this is paid for by the Planetary Society, so who knows if they'll build another one. I suspect they will, but it's not because Russians are involved.

      • Update from the Plantery Society (Score:5, Informative)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @12:41PM (#12882471) Homepage
        The Planetary Society has the following [planetary.org] to say:

        10:30 am PDT, June 22 (17:30 UTC)

        The Planetary Society as issued the following statement on the fate of Cosmos 1, the first Solar Sail Spacecraft:

        In the past twenty-four hours, the Russian space agency (RKA) has made a tentative conclusion that the Volna rocket carrying Cosmos 1 failed during the firing of the first stage. This would mean that Cosmos 1 is lost.

        While it is likely that this conclusion is correct, there are some inconsistent indications from information received from other sources. The Cosmos 1 team observed what appear to be signals, that looks like they are from the spacecraft when it was over the first three ground stations and some Doppler data over one of these stations. This might indicate that Cosmos 1 made it into orbit, but probably a lower one than intended. The project team now considers this to be a very small probability. But because there is a slim chance that it might be so, efforts to contact and track the spacecraft continue. We are working with US Strategic Command to provide additional information in a day or so.

        If the spacecraft made it to orbit, its autonomous program might be working, and after 4 days the sails could automatically deploy. While the chances of this are very, very small, we still encourage optical observers to see if the sail can be seen after that time.

        We await further developments and information coming out of Russia, STRATCOM, and the tracking stations.

    • Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:37AM (#12881859)
      These days NASA is full of over-educated monkeys who cringe at their own shadow.

      No, NASA is funded by congressional representatives that are too timid to explain the value of the program to their constituencies. And those people are voted into office by people too unaware of the role that science plays in their lives. And those people are raised by parents who think the schools should be the parents, so the schools are so busy teaching Johnny how to Share His Feelings that they never get around to teaching him where his Cartoon Network signal comes from. Don't blame NASA, blame parents.

      There, I fixed it.
      • And those people are raised by parents who think the schools should be the parents, so the schools are so busy teaching Johnny how to Share His Feelings that they never get around to teaching him where his Cartoon Network signal comes from. Don't blame NASA, blame parents.

        You're at least partly dead wrong. I'm formerly home schooled, and I'd crap my pants to get into NASA (I live five minutes from JSC, so I'm ready when they are). I will home school my own children, and I'll make good and sure they kno

        • Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up (Score:4, Interesting)

          by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @12:01PM (#12882095)
          You might be more on target if you aimed that at the california village-grown fools.

          Um... hence my reference to "those people that..."

          You're way in the minority, and I'm glad you're out there. But the vast majority of public school kids are basically uninformed, and worse, lack any critical thinking skills whatsoever. Enough of them vote (uncritically), or bitch at their legislators based on shallow, emotional, short-attention-span-driven reactions to things that we get ridiculous spending priorities. Our high tech/space programs do more to expand our tech economy, help with looming security issues, and keep us ahead of our competition in so many ways... if only the average kid was taught to think in terms of causal relationships and rational economics. Oh well.

          I'm glad to hear about astronomy being taught by an engineer in the home-school environment. Unfortunately, too many of the home-schooling families I'm aware of do so because they don't think normal schools put enough Jesus into astronomy, etc., so it's in some ways worse than the public schools. That certainly varies.
        • I'd crap my pants to get into NASA

          You'd better, as it's a job requirement [64.233.179.104] for astronauts. :)

    • "These days NASA is full of over-educated monkeys who cringe at their own shadow."

      They definitely need to find some middle ground. The incredibly complex shuttle, in all fairness, was driven more by military/national security design constraints. Meanwhile the "faster, cheaper, leaner" approach of the last decade proved to be a bit too fast and loose.

      Then again I wonder if they ever really could get back to the Apollo days? That seemed the best balance to me, but would the American public tolerate sever

    • the soviet era officially ended over a decade ago, FYI
    • Ripped from the post above:
      "The world's first solar sail spacecraft (search) crashed back to Earth when its booster rocket failed less than two minutes after Tuesday's takeoff, Russian space officials said Wednesday.

      In 1999, Russia launched a similar experiment with a sun-reflecting device from its Mir space station, but the deployment mechanism jammed and the device burned up in the atmosphere.

      In 2001, Russia again attempted a similar experiment, but the device failed to separate from the booster and bur

      • Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TigerNut ( 718742 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @12:52PM (#12882565) Homepage Journal
        You're missing some critical points there:

        2005: Booster fails - the solar sail never gets a chance.
        2001: Booster separation fails - the solar sail never gets a chance.
        1999: Deployment mechanism jammed - the solar sail never gets a chance.

        The solar sail part of the experiment hasn't had too many flight hours so far, due to component failures almost completely unrelated to the solar sail craft itself. They're not launching failure after failure... they're having launch failures, which is not the same thing.

    • Re:In Soviet Russia, they don't give up (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bskin ( 35954 ) <bentomb@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @12:19PM (#12882258)
      We go to the moon in this decade... The space race was won by people with drive and ambition. These days NASA is full of over-educated monkeys who cringe at their own shadow.

      Over-educated? They're fucking rocket scientists. A lot of education is generally considered a prerequisite. NASA's problems would seem to have a lot more to do with bureaucracy, politics, and lack of budget than, say, knowing too much.

    • Meanwhile, the Russians dust themselves off and prepare the next launch vehicle for the earliest possible sendup of the sail.

      You can criticize lots of things about the US space program, but not for open analysis of failures. It is just good engineering to fix problems and not hide them.

      I for one am heartened that a Russian sub-launched missile failed so ignominiously. One wonders how credible their nuclear deterent really is. Perhaps now is the time to hit them with a first strike!

    • Only on Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)

      by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @02:03PM (#12883346) Homepage
      Only on Slashdot can the Russians fuck up a launch, and then some idiot uses it as "evidence" of NASA's incompetence, and gets modded up for it.
    • > Meanwhile, the Russians dust themselves off and prepare the next launch vehicle for the earliest possible sendup of the sail.

      Which seems reasonable, considering this is a low-budget, unmanned project. It's cheaper to risk splashing another probe than spend hundeds of millions on post-mortem analysis.

      It would suck, though, if this were a manned program and the Russian Federation went for the "earliest possible" relaunch without deciding what the hell went wrong.

      The Soviets might have done this.

  • Contradiction? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Daedalus_ ( 38808 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:31AM (#12881793)
    Is it me, or does the Fox article contradict itself?

    First it crashed....
    MOSCOW -- The world's first solar sail spacecraft (search) crashed back to Earth when its booster rocket failed less than two minutes after Tuesday's takeoff, Russian space officials said Wednesday.
    ...but now it's in orbit and sending signals?
    U.S. scientists had said earlier that they possibly had detected signals from Cosmos 1 but cautioned that it could take hours or days to figure out exactly where the $4 million spacecraft was.

    The signals were picked up late Tuesday after an all-day search for the spacecraft, which had suddenly stopped communicating after its launch, they said.

    "It's good news because we are in orbit -- very likely in orbit," Bruce Murray, a co-founder of The Planetary Society (search), which organized the mission, said before the Russian space agency's announcement.
    ??

    • Re:Contradiction? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Neurowiz ( 18899 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:37AM (#12881858)
      No, that's a legit contradiction. If you go to the Planetary Society's website, you'll find that they are still hunting and there are clear signs that something is screwed up, but the spacecraft may have made it to orbit:

      http://planetary.org/solarsailblog [planetary.org]
      http://www.planetary.org/solarsail/latest_update.h tml [planetary.org]

      I'm kind of suprised that the Russians are so quick to call "fail" on this, given the conflicting data, but they had a bad karma space day yesterday, what with their other launch of a military payload failing as well.

      • I'm kind of suprised that the Russians are so quick to call "fail" on this, given the conflicting data, but they had a bad karma space day yesterday, what with their other launch of a military payload failing as well

        The reason that the Russians are quick to call a fail on this is due to when the booster failed. The craft may have made it to *AN* orbit, but with booster failure at 83 seconds, its unlikely to be a usable orbit for testing the sail in. If the sail cant be tested for whatever reason, th

        • True, that's a good point. The launch failed, but the mission might still be salvageable, depending on the orbit achieved. If it's not too low an orbit, would be interesting for them to use the sail to change their orbital characteristics, depending on if there's enough DV generated by the sails...
    • U.S. scientists had said earlier

      It's that old past perfect tense. The scientists had said one thing, but now that's over and the Russian scientists are saying a different thing.

      So either the US scientists were wrong (and they never got a signal; the article says "possibly") or they couldn't find it, then they found it, then they lost it again.

      There's really no contradiction; they may or may not have found it, but it sounds like it's gone now.
    • Were you looking to find consistency and accuracy from Faux News?

      That's so sweet. :)

    • Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. It's a poorly written article.

      CNN claims that they don't know what has happened to the spacecraft. The Russians say it crashed, but the controllers in Pascadena say it's alive. If they're really getting signals, I believe the latter until the Russians can find the debris.

    • Re:Contradiction? (Score:5, Funny)

      by glsunder ( 241984 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:48AM (#12881981)
      Is it me, or does the Fox article contradict itself?

      Nah, they're just being Fair and Balanced.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by It doesn't come easy ( 695416 ) * on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:31AM (#12881799) Journal
    Chief Spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) today confirmed that the new and improved Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center (CMOC), first announced last January, is fully functional. "We had our first real world test yesterday when an ICBM launch was detected from an as yet unidentified submarine in the Barents Sea. I am happy to report that the threat was eliminated without incident."

  • Has it? (Score:5, Informative)

    by spot35 ( 644375 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:33AM (#12881811)
    Just read this [theregister.co.uk] on the Register. Seems they are still receiving faint signals...

  • Ouch! (Score:2, Funny)

    by MudButt ( 853616 )
    I went into a deep depression after the loss of my $200 R.C. WWII fighter from Hobby Lobby... I wonder if these guys will bounce back.

  • misappropreations (Score:5, Funny)

    by TrippTDF ( 513419 ) <hiland@g m a i l.com> on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:34AM (#12881825)
    they could have spent the same 4 million to become Batman, and still have money to spare.

  • Don't Give Up Hope (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ndansmith ( 582590 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:35AM (#12881837)
    There is still plenty of reason for hope. All that happened was that the booster failed. We still don't know how the actually sail technology will perform, since the systems are unrelated.
  • Regardless of the challenges involved, I'm always extremely dissapointed to hear of a space reserach oriented failure. Of all the things in Science that need to work, I see space technology as something that we're so far behind due to wars, money and simple lack of interest or foresight. I saw myself living on a space station by now when I was a kid. Looks like I'll just be throwing in a 2001 Space Odyssey DVD instead.
    • Space technology is behind because of wars? I think you're confused. The rockets we see see today are the direct descendants of rockets like the V2. The moon landings were a direct result of competition between the US and the USSR during the cold war - that's why they're no longer happening. The space race is beginning to warm up again because countries like China are threating American military superiority in space.
    • If you think war has prevented anything regarding space sciences development, then you're not living in reality. Practically every major development in space has come directly from military needs.
    • How many space vehicles could be put into orbit with $87 Billion? How 'bout $1 billion? How 'bout half a billion?

      Here, pass me some microwave popcorn.
  • The force was NOT strong with this one.
  • Ok, so no broadcast flag...and the solar sail didn't launch...

    What next?

    Jack Kilby still alive!
    Court changes ruling: GIS data can be kept secret!

    All your yesterday Slashdot are belong to us!

  • Fox = Slashdot != Planetary Society (Score:5, Informative)

    by n54 ( 807502 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:41AM (#12881908) Homepage Journal

    Why the hell does Slashdot base their "news" on Fox rather than going to the source itself?

    Here's the latest (as of this moment) weblog entry from the Planetary Society itself as written by Emily Lakdawalla:

    "Jun 22, 2005 | 07:49 PDT | 14:49 UTC The morning after

    I showed up here at POP at about 7 am local time. I'm the only one here in the building at the moment. It was a very late night after a very long day yesterday, and we all knew that if anything there would be more people asking questions today; we needed the rest.

    Over our night and their day there has been some information coming out of Russia. To recap where we stand: yesterday the launch appeared to happen roughly on time. The Navy reported first stage firing. Then the signal of the spacecraft was detected over the temporary ground station at Petropavlovsk. But it wasn't detected over Majuro, which had us concerned. And then U. S. Strategic Command reported that they did not see our spacecraft in the sky. Later in the afternoon, we heard back from our man in Majuro that he thought actually he may have detected a weak signal. And then we heard the same from Panska Ves via Lou. That all seemed to add up to a consistent story that while there may have been a problem on board, our spacecraft likely was in orbit.

    Since then, there has been a new report circulating from Russia:

    ITAR-TASS is now quoting officials of the Russian Navy and the Makeyev design bureau as saying that the Volna first stage unexpectedly shut down 83 seconds after lift-off, adding that unlike the standard Volna SLBM the "space version" does not have an automatic destruct system for such an eventuality.

    About this, Lou made a statement last night:

    Project Director Louis Friedman cautioned that some data point to a launch vehicle misfiring, one that would prevent the spacecraft from achieving orbit. He said, "That the weak signals were recorded at the expected times of spacecraft passes over the ground stations is encouraging, but in no way are they conclusive enough for us to be sure that they came from Cosmos 1 working in orbit." The Russian space agency indicated that the Volna rocket may have had a problem during its first or second stage firing. "This," Friedman noted, "would almost certainly have prevented the spacecraft from reaching the correct orbit."

    What this means is that we are still dealing with a very wide range of possibilities for what could have happened yesterday, made even wider by the fact that it kind of sounds like some of the information that we have is contradictory. If the launch vehicle failed, how did we detect signals at Majuro and Panska Ves? On the other side, if the launch vehicle had a problem but still managed to put the spacecraft into some orbit, why didn't Strat Comm see it last night? We don't know what to make of it. We hope to get more information from Lou in an hour or two. Stand by for that."

    • the Volna first stage unexpectedly shut down 83 seconds after lift-off

      Isn't the Volna a solid-fueled rocket? If so, it's not nearly as likely to "unexpectedly shut down" as a liquid-fueled rocket. Indeed, the main reservation NASA had about adding solid-fuel boosters to Shuttle was that they can't be shut down, or even throttled-back.

      • Seems the Volna is a liquid-fueled rocket (I didn't know but wanted to find out).

        More detailed information on it from http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/r29.htm [astronautix.com]

        "Model: R-29K. IOC: 1978. Country: Russia. Other Designations: RSM-50. Department of Defence Designation [my edit: and NATO designation]: SS-N-18 Mod 2. ASCC Reporting Name: Stingray. Article Number: 4K75K. Manufacturer's Designation: R-29K. Popular Name: Volna. Launch System: D-9. Complex: 4K75K.

        First flight 1977.

        Manufacturer: Makayev. Total Mas

  • Laughing (Score:4, Funny)

    by Cthefuture ( 665326 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:43AM (#12881930)
    You just know that right now there are some aliens up there watching and laughing their asses off. They probably record everything we do and broadcast their own reality series back to their planet(s). "Tonight on funniest earth out-takes..."

    Come on you Vulcan bastards, come down here and help us pathic morons!

    Seriously though, I think current world events (including the decline of Russia's military and America's focus on homeland dipshiatery) has lead to lack of interest/funding/training in space-related activies. The result is inevitable.

    • Re:Laughing (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Brandybuck ( 704397 )
      Seriously though, I think current world events has lead to lack of interest/funding/training in space-related activies. The result is inevitable.

      Actually, I think we're going about it the right way. It's up for private interests to fund space now, and they will do it. But only when it makes economic sense. I think that's going to be very very soon.

      We've already been the moon. We've already demonstrated a resuable orbiter. So what are we proving with all those additional billions of dollars? Now is the ti

  • Pity... (Score:2)

    by Shads ( 4567 )
    ... the technology is a nice idea. The US needs to do the sending up, the russians haven't had much luck with these.
  • ...Netcraft comfirms that they fail it.
  • Does anyone really believe that this mission failed, or for that matter that this solar sail aircraft was only intended to "orbit the earth". Yeah right. We all know the Russians have developed a solar sail space craft capable of faster-than-light travel but don't want to let the rest of the world know about it yet.

    My tinfoil hat is itchy... that means I'm right.

  • Space Is Expensive...If You Want To Succeed. (Score:4, Informative)

    by ausoleil ( 322752 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @11:59AM (#12882073) Homepage
    As far as space launches go, this was an incredibly inexpensive one. However, that does not say that it was cheap for the Sagan folks. Hopefully, they will bounce back and get their bird up into space sooner rather than later.

    To those who criticize NASA, which is hamstrung by its own bureaucracy and an overall lack of fncding, one would be remiss to fail to point out that they have indeed placed two probes on Mars recently, vehicles that have vastly exceeded their life-expectancies and remain useful and operational.

    That also extends to the Space Shuttle. Those who constantly criticize it are either ignoring or are ignorant of its history: the Shuttle was a compromised design due to politics rather than technology, and NASA has been "stuck" with a vehicle it would rather not have initially had. On that point, the current design of the shuttle was certainly not what NASA wanted. As the mnost complex mechanical system on the planet, it is bound for failure, and it will not surprise me when all of them are lost in flight accidents.

    That's why SpaceShipOne excited me so much on a personal level. It was a successful project, done relatively inexpensively and proved that private funding could succeed in putting a bird up in to technical space. By itself, SS1 is hardly a blip in space history, but it will serve as impetus to what comes next. Fresh eyes coming up with new solutions is a great idea.

    The bottom line is this: Today, space flight is expensive, at least if you want a high probability of success. While it is tragic that the Solar Sail probe was lost, it does serve as yet another reminder that "on the cheap" programs prove that you get what you pay for. If you want to go to space, bring copious amounts of cash. It may seem wasteful in the midst of success, but in the midst of failures such as this, the costs suddenly become reasonable.
  • Not according to this article [cnn.com] which was posted at 12:08 PM EST.

    From the article:

    But controllers at the Pasadena, California, office of the Planetary Society, the mission's U.S. backers, said the craft appeared to be "alive" and sending signals to tracking stations.

    "We have no evidence that anything is wrong with the spacecraft at all," said Bruce Betts, the Planetary Society's director of projects, late on Tuesday.

    My original comment [slashdot.org] was modded down because someone didn't like my comment a

  • I, for one, blame the metric system for the Russian's problems. They need to start using furlongs and hogsheads like the rest of us civuhlized people.
  • that the west really had nothing to worry about after all during the cold war?

  • Donating $$$ for the next Solar Sails attempt (Score:3, Insightful)

    by otisg ( 92803 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @12:30PM (#12882371) Homepage Journal
    If all it takes is $4M, I'd donate $50 to a team who has the knowledge and drive to give this another try soon, and I don't think I'm alone.

  • Donations to Planetary Society for another attempt (Score:4, Informative)

    by p3d0 ( 42270 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @01:05PM (#12882703)
    If you want to see them try again, donate here [planetary.org].

  • CNN Reporting Faint Signals (Score:3, Informative)

    by frank249 ( 100528 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @04:57PM (#12885103)
    CNN now reporting [cnn.com] that something went wrong:However, weak signals received by tracking stations in the Pacific Ocean, Russia and the Czech Republic seemed to show it had made it into orbit... "The good news is we have reason to believe it's alive and in orbit," said Murray, a former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The bad news is we don't know where it is."

    "We have no evidence that anything is wrong with the spacecraft at all," said Bruce Betts, the Planetary Society's director of projects, late on Tuesday.

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