Arabsat 4a Ready for Lift Off

Zaphod

Unlike the Hotbird 7a launch, this looks like it will take off in the next few minutes:

NSS7 22W
11074H
6111
3/4

Arabsat 2B 30.5E
4196L
3000
3/4

Arabsat 2D 26E
11681 H
27500
3/4

Zaphod

Successful launch. Next one from Baikonur is Astra 1KR on April 20 on an Atlas rocket.
http://www.ilslaunch.com/

Zaphod

Failure for Russian rocket

Russia's space programme suffered another embarrassing failure, when a booster rocket failed to put an Arab commercial satellite in a designated orbit.

The Arabsat 4A telecommunications satellite owned by the Saudi Arabsat company was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Proton-M booster rocket equipped with an additional Briz-M upper stage, the Russian Federal Space Agency said in a statement.

The Proton-M successfully delivered the satellite to a preliminary orbit, but the Briz-M then failed to function properly and could not deliver the satellite to a designated orbit, the agency said.

An emergency panel of space officials was investigating the incident, it said.

Federal Space Agency spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko said experts from the European Astrium company which built the satellite were trying to save it by guiding it to a proper orbit using the vehicle's own orientation engines.

Davidenko said the satellite separated from the Briz-M earlier than required and remained in an orbit much lower than the designated one.

The bungled launch was the latest in a series of mishaps that have recently plagued Russia's space programme, jeopardising its hopes to earn more revenue from commercial launches of foreign satellites.

In October, a high-profile European satellite was lost because of a Russian booster failure. The loss of the CryoSat satellite dealt a major blow to the European Space Agency, which had hoped to conduct a three-year mapping of polar ice caps and provide more reliable data for the study of global warming.

Also that month, space experts failed to recover an experimental space vehicle after its return, engineers lost contact with an earlier launched Russian Earth-monitoring satellite and a new optical research satellite was lost due to a booster failure.

Following the failed launches, Russia's President Vladimir Putin fired the chief of the Khrunichev company that built the Rokot booster. The rocket that failed was also built by Khrunichev.

Zaphod

Few pics from last night:

















Free Image Hosting [xs.to]

Zaphod

Round-the-moon rescue?

What can you do with a satellite in a useless orbit? That's the question now facing the folks who built, launched and hoped to use the Arabsat 4A telecommunications satellite — and one of the potential answers could involve an unorthodox trip all the way around the moon to get the orbit back in sync.

The problem arose on Wednesday when the upper stage of a Russian Proton-M rocket malfunctioned, leaving Arabsat in an orbit too low for the job it was designed to do. It's a big setback for the Russians, who launched the Proton from their Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan — and it's a headache as well for the Saudi-based Arabsat consortium, the EADS Astrium company that built the satellite, and the insurers who have to make good on the loss.

It's not clear whether Arabsat's orbit can be raised to the right place as it circles the earth. NBC News space analyst James Oberg reports that satellite experts are considering an alternative trajectory that would slingshot the satellite around the moon and back. Believe it or not, that strategy has been used before to salvage a satellite gone awry.

On Christmas Day 1997, a similarly problematic Proton launch left the Asiasat 3 satellite in a similarly useless orbit, apparently a total loss. Hughes Global Services, the satellite's manufacturer, bought Asiasat back from the insurers — then gave it a new lease on life by sending it on a "free return lunar flyby."

After making a round-the-moon trip and going through another corrective maneuver, the satellite — renamed HGS-1 — settled into a nice, circular orbit. Since then, the craft was acquired by PanAmSat, given yet another name (PAS 22), and moved into yet another telecommunications slot.

In an e-mail, Oberg says that the folks behind the Asiasat maneuver are now in touch with the parties considering Arabsat's fate, and that all the parties involved may work out a rescue plan in the days ahead:

"A mission rescue via lunar swingby is under serious consideration, but issues of ownership remain to be settled. And even if the probe cannot be moved into an operational 24-hour orbit, it can certainly be sent out to the moon on an Arab space mission. ... The Saudis would love it."

Stay tuned for the next installment in Arabsat's space saga. It's worth noting that just such a round-the-moon trip is being offered as a $100 million-a-ticket ride for private space travelers.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3217961/

Zaphod

http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/03/arabsat_4a_is_b.html

Arabsat 4A is Back on Earth

Editor's note: Arabsat 4a has been splashed into the Pacific Ocean. It went in at 43 degrees south 212 degrees east on 24 March.

Update

ArabSat bites the dust, dashing hopes, MSNBC

"An off-course communications satellite that a private team wanted to rescue and resell has instead been steered to its destruction in Earth's atmosphere, according to the Defense Department and amateur satellite watchers."

Zaphod

Zaphod wrote:

Successful launch. Next one from Baikonur is Astra 1KR on April 20 on an Atlas rocket.
http://www.ilslaunch.com/

From Cape Canaveral not Baikonur.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av008/060302stacking.html

The Yanks should have a bit more razzmatazz with their launch than the Ruskies, with lots of interesting camera angles:
http://www.ilslaunch.com/launches/atlaslaunches/Atlas52/