Повторные испытания космического парусника

Готовятся повторные испытания космического парусника "Космос-1"

Jun 21, 2005 | 21:36 PDT | Jun 22 04:36 UTC
Planetary Society Official Statement

We continue to search for the Cosmos 1 spacecraft. We have reviewed our telemetry recordings and have found what we believe are spacecraft signals in the data recorded at the tracking stations in Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka and Majuro, Marshall Islands. The review of data received at the tracking station in Panska Ves, Czech Republic also appears to indicate a spacecraft signal. If confirmed, these data will indicate that Cosmos 1 made it to orbit. We will continue to monitor planned telemetry sessions and will be working with U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) to locate Cosmos 1.

Jun 21, 2005 | 21:41 PDT | Jun 22 04:41 UTC
"We have a live spacecraft..."

...we think.

We got spacecraft telemetry data from Kamchatka. We feel reasonably confident that what we saw was real signal. In going back through the Majuro data, Viktor reported this afternoon that we now think we got about 10 seconds of data from that pass. And that 10 seconds of data is consistent enough with the stuff from Kamchatka that we're pretty sure that Viktor saw something that originated from Cosmos 1. Panska Ves also reportedly saw some similar kind of data, with similar kinds of paterns.

So what this means is that we are probably in orbit, but it's not the orbit that we thought it was. So now we search. It could take days to find. We hope to hear from Strat Comm again tomorrow morning.

Where could we be? Odds are, if it was a problem with the launch vehicle, the launch vehicle more likely underperformed than overperformed. That means our orbit is more likely elliptical than circular, and also lower, and therefore faster than we expect. Without knowing where the spacecraft is, it becomes harder and harder to find as we go out from the launch date. Strategic Command has not seen the spacecraft — we don't know why.

So — we still don't know where it is, and we're still not in contact with it, which presents a serious problem. We're doing what we can to find it. But the fact that we think we saw it at Majuro and Panska Ves earlier today, means it's alive and in orbit, and there's a much better chance than it seemed earlier today that we could find it again.

Jun 21, 2005 | 22:05 PDT | Jun 22 05:05 UTC
What happened this afternoon:

So, it may be clear to you by now that some of this information began to come in much earlier this afternoon. We got a phone call from Viktor Kerzhanovich, who was our guy in Majuro, at maybe around 4 this afternoon local time, saying that he thought he might have seen some signal. But he wasn't sure. Being in a remote location, he had to get the data onto a memory stick and drive it to another computer and then email it to us, which took some time. I relayed the data to Russia as the guys here started scratching their heads about it. It was really sketchy. And as Jim has said to the press just now, if this was all we had, we would not be sounding very hopeful about the mission right now. It was not enough of a lead for us to talk about publlicly, because it was so questionable.

But as the guys started making some sense of the Majuro data, the sense that they were getting was consistent with the sense they were getting out of the Petropavlovsk data. Which was Really Good News. Individually, both data sets were rather sketchy, but together they began to make a consistent story.

In the meantime, once we had told Lou about the Majuro data, he replied that the Russians were thinking that maybe they had some kind of marginal contact with Panska Ves. Which, if true, is Tremendously Good News. If Cosmos 1 made it all the way around the southern end of the Earth and back up, across the equator, to Panska Ves, that means that it has to be in orbit, and not crashed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

I wasn't going to include this in the weblog out of respect for my boss, but Jim Cantrell just mentioned it to the press, so I have to share. As Lou and I were exchanging email messages about these contacts he confided that he was at Slava Linkin's house, winding down after the events of the day (it was in the wee hours of the morning Moscow time), and before going to bed they were taking some traditional Russian relaxant, i.e. vodka. He joked to us, "every drink results in new signal." (He also assured us that the analysts who were working on the data were assuredly not participating in the same activity.)

Just to close, here is a map of what we expected the ground track to be (white line) on Cosmos 1's first orbit. You can see where it was expected to go. How far it may have been from that line we just don't know. But we're feeling much better now that it may still be up there somewhere.

050621_2222_map.jpg

This map is for 20:10:34 UT, showing where Cosmos 1 was supposed to be visible to both Petropavlovsk and Majuro. It was visible to both, so it was up there and it couldn't have been that far from its nominal track. And we think it was seen by Panska Ves.

So we hope. And we'll look again tomorrow. Between now and then — we sleep. My next update will be posted some time after 08:00 PDT / 15:00 UT. Goodnight and thanks for reading.

 

Выпуск № 482, текущий.

NEW 22.06.2005 / 00:44 Стартовал "солнечный парус"
21 июня 2005 года в 19:46:09 UTC (23:46:09 мск) с борта российской атомной подводной лодки К-496 "Борисоглебск", находившейся в погруженном состоянии в акватории Баренцева моря, осуществлен пуск ракеты-носителя "Волна" с космическим аппаратом Cosmos-1 ("солнечный парус"). Пока нет подтверждения выхода аппарата на околоземную орбиту.


NEW 22.06.2005 / 08:31 Вторая авария подряд

21 июня 2005 года можно назвать" черным днем" для российской космонавтики. Две попытки запуска космических аппаратов и две неудачи. Запущенная поздно вечером с борта атомной подводной лодки ракета-носитель "Волна" с космическим аппаратом Cosnos-1 ("солнечный парус") также не смогла выполнить свою задачу и упала. По предварительной информации, произошло преждевременное отключение двигателя первой ступени. О месте падения ракеты пока не сообщается. К ее поискам приступили рано утром 22 июня.

NEW 22.06.2005 / 09:36 Куроедов: подводная лодка запустила "Космос-1" в штатном режиме

Стратегическая подводная лодка Северного флота выполнила задачу по космическому запуску ракеты-носителя "Волна" в штатном режиме, заявил в среду главнокомандующий Военно-морским флотом, адмирал Владимир Куроедов, комментируя нештатную ситуацию с запуском "солнечного паруса".
"Экипаж отработал все штатно, проблем с запуском ракеты на борту лодки не было. Экипаж жив и здоров", - сказал Куроедов. По его словам, "после выполнения этой задачи лодка продолжила выполнение поставленных перед ней командованием флота задач".

NEW 22.06.2005 / 10:53 О сигналах от "солнечного паруса"

В данный момент практически все информационные агентства и космические сайты сообщают о том, что несколько наземных станций получили слабые сигналы с потерянного спутника Cosmos-1 в первые часы после запуска. Как заявил руководитель Планетарного общества Брюс Мюррей, это может означать, что Cosmos-1 все же вышел на околоземную орбиту, но ее параметры существенно отклоняются от запланированных. Сигналы получены станциями на Камчатке и на Маршалловых островах, а также в Чехии. Официальные представители миссии заявили, что поиски аппарата продолжаются.
Несмотря на оптимизм, который сквозит во всех этих сообщениях, слабо верится, что запуск "солнечного паруса" закончился хотя бы частичной удачей. Но надежда всегда умирает последней. Вспомните, хотя бы, сколько раз сообщалось о получении каких-то сигналов от американских марсианских станций Mars Polar Lander и Mars Climate Orbiter, потерянных в 1999 году в окрестностях Марса, или от европейского аппарата Beagle-2, "севшего" на Марсе в ночь на Рождество 2003 года. Или "северокорейский спутник", сигналы от которого принимали только "избранные".
Хочу ошибится в случае с Cosmos-1, но вероятнее, что произошла авария и на околоземной орбите нет никакого аппарата.

 

Cosmos 1 will continue to orbit the Earth once every 101 minutes for about four more days, capturing one Pancam image on each orbit, as mission controllers check out the spacecraft’s health. Four days is estimated to be enough time for all the air that might have been trapped in the solar sails when they were packed to leak out to the vacuum of space. If all checks out, Cosmos 1 will be ready to unfurl its sails.

 

Sail Deployment Orbit

The following times and dates are dependent upon predictions for the spacecraft’s orbit, and will likely change after launch. Please return to planetary.org for the most up-to-date figures.

 

The first images should be returned to the Earth within an hour or two after deployment. The exact schedule will not be known until after launch, when the spacecraft’s orbit is better known.

Other events to look forward to:

June 27: First attempt to rotate sail blades
June 28: First attempt to use sail blades to control orientation of spacecraft

 

// The Planetary Society's Cosmos 1 Weblog

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.