More Problems with Plesetsk?

Another possible Plesetsk failure today (110/8/05),
of a Rockot/Briz KM carrying ESA's Cryosat, although
this has not been confirmed yet. ITAR TASS had this
report, which said,

"A command to separate the second stage of the carrier
rocket didn't get through at the 6th minute of the flight
and communication with the probe wasn't established at
the designated time," Alexander Bobrenyov, the press
secretary of the Khrunichev center, said".

We had talked about the elevated space launch
failure rate at Plestesk earlier this year. If
this is a failure, half of the launches from the
Northern Cosmodrome would have failed so far this
year.

Here's my earlier post from June, 2005 about
this:

"http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/msg/b0ca889fde4610a6?dmode=source&hl=en"


The June 21, 2005 Molniya-M launch vehicle failure
(which was the first Molniya-M failure in 15 years
after 52 consecutive successes) is the fifth failed
space launch in 35 attempts from Plesetsk in Russia
since 1999, exclusive. This includes two failures
by the usually-reliable R-7 types. No other launch
site in the world has suffered more than two failures
during the same time frame.


Are they doing something wrong at the Northern
Cosmodrome?


Launch Results 2000-2005(6/21)
(Sites with more than 10 Launches)
Site Launches(Failures)
-----------------------------
Baikonur 99(1)
Canaveral 66(1)
Kourou 40(2)
Plesetsk 35(5)
Vandenberg 28(1)
KSC 17(1)
Sea Launch 14(2)
Xi Chang 11(0)
-----------------------------



- Ed Kyle

Spaceflightnow article cites a missing command in the flight control
sequence that prevented 2nd / 3rd stage separation. The recent
failures are reminiscent of the string of 1998-1999 Titan failures in
the multitude of causes from hardware defect to procedural errors.

Mike Chan wrote:
Spaceflightnow article cites a missing command in the flight control
sequence that prevented 2nd / 3rd stage separation. The recent
failures are reminiscent of the string of 1998-1999 Titan failures in
the multitude of causes from hardware defect to procedural errors.

Rokot was turning out to be a reliable ride until
this failure (this was the eighth Rokot orbital
attempt and the first failure). It is a shame the
vehicle waited until a $170 million spacecraft was
aboard before it failed. The UR-100N launcher
upon which Rokot is based had not suffered a
failure since 1992, as best I can tell, but it did
suffer a fair number of failures during its
development in the late 1970s.

- Ed Kyle

Ed Kyle wrote:
Another possible Plesetsk failure today (110/8/05),
of a Rockot/Briz KM carrying ESA's Cryosat, although
this has not been confirmed yet. ITAR TASS had this
report, which said,

"A command to separate the second stage of the carrier
rocket didn't get through at the 6th minute of the flight
and communication with the probe wasn't established at
the designated time," Alexander Bobrenyov, the press
secretary of the Khrunichev center, said".

We had talked about the elevated space launch
failure rate at Plestesk earlier this year. If
this is a failure, half of the launches from the
Northern Cosmodrome would have failed so far this
year.

Here's my earlier post from June, 2005 about
this:

"http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/msg/b0ca889fde4610a6?dmode=source&hl=en"


The June 21, 2005 Molniya-M launch vehicle failure
(which was the first Molniya-M failure in 15 years
after 52 consecutive successes) is the fifth failed
space launch in 35 attempts from Plesetsk in Russia
since 1999, exclusive. This includes two failures
by the usually-reliable R-7 types. No other launch
site in the world has suffered more than two failures
during the same time frame.


..
Are they doing something wrong at the Northern
Cosmodrome?

..

My guess is they're too busy staying warm. :-)

It is interesting that the error apparently took place in a system that
obviously has to be specifically altered for orbital launch vice
warhead delivery--you would think they would be especially careful in
those areas...


Tom

Launch Results 2000-2005(6/21)
(Sites with more than 10 Launches)
Site Launches(Failures)
-----------------------------
Baikonur 99(1)
Canaveral 66(1)
Kourou 40(2)
Plesetsk 35(5)
Vandenberg 28(1)
KSC 17(1)
Sea Launch 14(2)
Xi Chang 11(0)
-----------------------------



- Ed Kyle

Tom Cuddihy wrote:


My guess is they're too busy staying warm. :-)

It is interesting that the error apparently took place in a system that
obviously has to be specifically altered for orbital launch vice
warhead delivery--you would think they would be especially careful in
those areas...



You may have just stumbled on where the FOBS concept came from- somebody
forgot to turn the nob from "Orbit" to "United States". :-)

Pat

Tom Cuddihy wrote:
Ed Kyle wrote:
Another possible Plesetsk failure today (110/8/05),
of a Rockot/Briz KM carrying ESA's Cryosat, although
this has not been confirmed yet. ITAR TASS had this
report, which said,
[...]
It is interesting that the error apparently took place in a system that
obviously has to be specifically altered for orbital launch vice
warhead delivery--you would think they would be especially careful in
those areas...

BBC News has this report:

quote
"We confirm from the information we have from the State Commission that
there was a problem with the software flight control system in the
Breeze upper stage of the launcher," European Space Agency
spokesperson, Simonetta Cheli, told the BBC News website.
/quote
at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4381840.stm

/dps

snidely wrote:
Tom Cuddihy wrote:
Ed Kyle wrote:
Another possible Plesetsk failure today (110/8/05),
of a Rockot/Briz KM carrying ESA's Cryosat, although
this has not been confirmed yet. ITAR TASS had this
report, which said,
[...]
It is interesting that the error apparently took place in a system that
obviously has to be specifically altered for orbital launch vice
warhead delivery--you would think they would be especially careful in
those areas...

BBC News has this report:

quote
"We confirm from the information we have from the State Commission that
there was a problem with the software flight control system in the
Breeze upper stage of the launcher," European Space Agency
spokesperson, Simonetta Cheli, told the BBC News website.
/quote
at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4381840.stm

Software strikes again!

Yeah, I know. Software doesn't kill rockets, people
who use software kill rockets.

- Ed Kyle