Jan 6 2003
From The Space Library
After a series of delays, a Titan 2 rocket carried into orbit the U.S. military's Coriolis research satellite, launching from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The refurbished Titan 2 intercontinental ballistic missile placed the spacecraft in orbit 5 1/2 minutes after launch, and the rocket's second stage deployed its payload approximately 1 hour later. The US$224 million Coriolis mission carried the Navy's Windsat microwave polarimetric radiometer and the Air Force's Solar Mass Ejection Imager. The U.S. military had designed Windsat to measure wind speed and direction at or near the surface of Earth's seas, providing improved weather forecasting to assist in planning naval operations. The Air Force intended the Solar Mass Ejection Imager to provide “an early warning of coronal mass ejections from the Sun that impact Earth, disrupting communications and power grids.(Justin Ray, “Coriolis Launched To Track Ocean Winds, Solar Storms,” Spaceflight Now, 6 January 2003.
The Arianespace Flight 157 Inquiry Board submitted its report to Ariane space, establishing the most probable cause of the failure of an Ariane 5 ECA on the night of 11/12 December 2002. The Board had analyzed all measurements recorded during Flight 157 and had reviewed all documentation concerning production, quality, and technical records for the Ariane 5 ECA~which used a Vulcain 2 engine~as well as the documentation for all Ariane 5 flights to date. The Board had identified a leak in the Vulcain 2 nozzle's cooling circuit during the first flight phase. The leak had caused critical overheating of the nozzle, a loss of integrity, and a major imbalance in the thrust of the Vulcain 2 engine, leading to the loss of control over the launcher's trajectory. The Board concluded that two aggravating factors, occurring simultaneously, had caused the failure: “degraded thermal condition of the nozzle due to fissures in the cooling tubes” and “non-exhaustive definition of the loads to which the Vulcain 2 engine is subjected during flight.” Although its review of the operating data from the Vulcain 1 engine's successful flights identified no weakness in the functioning and resistance of the nozzle, the Board recommended a thorough review of the Ariane 5. Upon learning the factors involved in the failure of Ariane 5 ECA, Arianespace decided to create a board to study the upcoming 14 January launch of Rosetta. ESA had timed the mission to enable Rosetta to rendezvous with the comet Wirtanen. (ESA, “Arianespace Flight 1 57~ Inquiry Board Submits Findings,” http://www. esa. int/esaCP/ESA 7198708D_index_0.html (accessed 28 July 2008).
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