Jul 23 2003
From The Space Library
NASA announced the selection of the Lockheed Martin Commercial Launch Services' Atlas 5 expendable launch vehicle for the Pluto New Horizons mission scheduled to launch in January 2006. The agreement with Lockheed Martin stipulated a firm fixed-price, launch-service task order under the terms of NASA's launch services contract with Lockheed Martin. NASA planned for its Pluto New Horizons mission to conduct the first reconnaissance of the binary planet system of Pluto-Charon, gathering information about the surfaces, atmospheres, interiors, and space environments of Pluto and Charon. (NASA, “Atlas V Chosen To Launch New Horizons Mission,” contract release C03-y, Space.com (accessed 23 December 2008).
NASA announced the results of its own mishap investigation board's review of the loss of the X-43A Hyper-X research vehicle during its launch on 2 June 2001. The experimental plane was the first of three that NASA had developed and produced in a US$185 million program. The board concluded that the flight had failed because “the vehicle's control system design was deficient in several analytical modeling areas, which overestimated the system's margins.” For the test flight, the X-43A had launched aboard the nose of a modified Pegasus launch vehicle carried by NASA's modified B-52 bomber. The bomber had released the Pegasus at an altitude of 24,000 feet (7,315.2 meters), igniting its solid rocket motor (SRM) and sending the research-vehicle payload on its test flight. After beginning its planned pitch-up maneuver, the X-43A had experienced a control anomaly leading to a structural overload of the starboard elevon. The vehicle had then deviated significantly from its planned trajectory, and NASA had destroyed it 48.6 seconds after its release. The mishap investigation board, which had found a number of modeling inaccuracies, had been able to reproduce the flight mishap only after incorporating all of the inaccuracies into its analysis, leading the board to conclude that no single factor or potential contributing factor had caused the mishap. The board also found that preflight analyses, including wind tunnel tests, had failed to predict how the rocket would perform in flight. (NASA, “NASA Mishap Board Identifies Cause of X-43A Failure,” news release 03-246, 23 July 2003, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/jul/HQ_03246_X43A_Mishap.html (accessed 23 December 2008); Associated Press, “Rocket Failure Doomed Hypersonic NASA Jet, Investigation Finds,” 23 July 2003.
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