A Bad Day for Russia
ISS Orbit Correction Failed, Sputnik News
“Engines of the Progress M-26M cargo spacecraft, which is currently docked to the International Space Station (ISS), did not start on time, and a planned correction of the ISS orbit could not be carried out, a source in the Russian Federal Space Agency said Saturday.”
NASA ISS On-Orbit Status 18 May 2015
“A reboost of the International Space Station using the Russian Progress 58 cargo craft was completed successfully on Sunday at 7:30 p.m. CDT. A previous attempt on Friday evening was aborted one second into the burn automatically by the Progress vehicle. Russian flight controllers identified an issue with one of the eight thrusters on the spacecraft that was disabled for Sunday’s backup attempt.”
Russian Proton Rocket Experiences Anomaly Shortly After Launch [With Video], SpaceRef Business
“Almost exactly to the day a year after Russia lost a Proton-M rocket, yet another Proton-M has failed. In this latest setback to the Russian commercial space program, today’s Proton-M rocket appeared to launch normally, but failed soon into the launch and did not deliver its payload, a Mexican satellite, to orbit.”
Marc’s note: The Russians must be besides themselves with all these anomalies ongoing. It begs the question, if the Progress and Protons are having issues, could the venerable Soyuz have issues going forward?
A bad day for “commercial” rockets I would think.
We’ll never have commercial space if they can’t stop them from blowing up so much. 🙁
Each program and nation has unique problems and assets. There is little or nothing in common between Proton and Progress (both government programs) and SpaceX.
The point I was making.
Each time there is a failure the argument can be made that Space programs should stay under government control.
Russia has flown about 400 flights in its history. They have had a failure about every ninth flight. Lol
If they were flying a flight a day that would be almost a failure every week!
That’s no way to run a commercial airline!
If we/humans want to REALLY have a commercial future we have to get much better at flying safe/inexpensive rockets.
So every rocket booster failure hurts commercial progress I think.
Richards Schumacher reminder is the ticket to safer launch history I think.
Sorry, I missed your subtle humor. My bad.
It’s not subtle humor. It’s much less than that.
It unseemly to keep dumping on someone who is simply being enthusiastic. Save the artillery for those deserving it.
Wasn’t being funny. Perhaps not clear
Problem I have all the time 🙂
What’s funny about 93% success rate? You think that 7 failures every 100 launches, on average, is funny? Oddly, you don’t think it’s funny when people discuss SpaceX’s failures. Interesting bias you have.
YOU A RIGHT! I wasn’t trying to be funny at all!
Russia as the BEST rocket flight record in the world bar none!
The point which should be very clear is that compared to a commercial Airliner, rocketry is no where near safe enough or frequent enough to support commercial flights!
It is my hope that going forward somebody will be able to fly nearly everyday without major rocket failures.
Case and point It is AMAZING what ULA has been able to do with the history of their current rocket fleet. And it seems to me that once the Reusable rocket age takes hold, that companies getting to recover/test/fly retest and upgrade their hardware, that daily flights WILL be possible.
The point of my comment Mr. Squared, is it is laughable “lol” how far we are from daily routine “commercial” flights to Leo.
After learning that this was the Russians 47th failure in about 400 flights. I asked this.
Mr. Bruno’s reply
Well that’s certainly not enlightening at all, nor did I expect it to be. I’m willing to bet that in 50 years, SpaceX won’t be launching daily. I’m willing to bet there won’t be daily launches world wide in 50 years. You’re free, however, to believe whatever fiction you want.
love to take you up on that bet, that rockets will launch every day in fifty years (world wide) but I’ll be dead.
Spx has direct plans for multiple flights per day
This is probably a good time to point the difference between plans and things that have actually happened. It’s also a good time to point that other great minds, at least as great as Musk, had plans that didn’t come to fruition and ideas that didn’t pan out.
It’s easy when all you have to do is plan things and not actually do them. Of course the real things don’t operate that way.
I’m willing to bet we’re decades away from anyone launching every day. Enthusiasm, unfortunately is proof of nothing.
Nobody thought there would be weekly flights back in 1960. Yet now there are.
SpaceX’s enthusiasms turn in into deliberate actions.
That makes no sense.
When spacex decides to do something they work out the engineering and the financing and then follow a deliberate course to achieve their goals. I recall following the evolution of their vertical landing process. It was not a foregone conclusion. bit by bit Musk would mention how his engineers were pushing the envelope closer to allowing the tail stand landing, getting the numbers to work. Finally SpaceX announced that as the plan and began the R & D and then production, all of which may come to fruition next month.
That may convince you that they’ll soon be launching every day, but I need something a bit more substantive. As such, nothing you’ve said has convinced me to change my mind about there be launches every day in the near future.
In the end I’m only guessing, and you’re only guessing. No matter, the market says we’re a long way from launching every day.
Speaking of PsiSquared’s bet:
http://aviationweek.com/com…
I was thinking I wouldn’t be around to collect, but maybe I should reconsider.
Is Yale right that SpaceX has plans to launch rockets multiple times a day.
Those fools that’s laughable. Don’t they know there is no market for that many flights! They are wasting their time!
Better to sit around and just accept the way things are.
Don’t they know it is impossible to build an affordable reusable rocket? If it was possible NASA would have done it in the last 50 years but they didn’t did they????
And your right if everybody thought like you nothing would ever change.
@John_Gardi Should @ulalaunch be designing their rockets4daily flights like @spacex or building them2 survive in current market?
@torybruno
Answer
That’s awesome. You didn’t even include him and he replied.
I included him at the bottom there, however he is real good about answering people’s questions. He’s the coolest CEO I know 🙂 He is like ASK ME ANYTHING 24 7
In the real world there is no market for daily flights to LEO, and it will be a very long time before there is, if there ever is. At this point, it’s “laughable” to even think a market even exists for daily flights to LEO.
Once the prices drop that may change. Even in the real world. 🙂
re: Bruno-nice ‘get’ !
As to launching once a day, or more, once we finally figure out how to make money in space then you will see rockets jumping constantly. And from where I sit, there’s only one way to make money in space- exploitation of mineral resources in the asteroid belt.
Yes, the asteroids are a LONG way away. I know. But that’s where the $$$ is. And that is where smart people will go once the polish is off the silly ‘get to Mars’ apple.
… (? not sure how to delete a reply I moved to a better position)
I’d be happy to be proven wrong; however there is no evidence either in launch systems or in the commercial market that indicates that there will be a market for a launch ever single day of the year, certainly not within the next few decades.
As there was no evidence in 1927 that 747s would be ferrying thousands across the Atlantic in less than 50 years. Etc, etc. The point is, the fundamentals (physics, resources, etc) are sound, and technology routinely surprises us beyond the predictive horizon at 25 – 50 years. I think you are very likely to be happy to be proved wrong, if only you live so long. (Good luck!)
http://spacenews.com/inmars…
Negative effects
The Russian equipment at least on the HSF side has been very reliable over the years. The recent Progress failure stands out just for that reason. The engine start failure may just be something minor that they will be able to correct, or it could be a second failed Progress vehicle. Which would be bad news for ISS because as Marc points out it would raise some concerns about the Russian HSF hardware and/or operations.
The Proton failure meanwhile would on the surface seem to be a coincidence, like we sometimes see in military aviation accidents which occur close together but have no obvious connection. Unless there is a larger management/quality issue that is somehow starting to permeate the entire Russian space program.
There is absolutely a larger quality control issue going on. The deeply corrupt Russian system of everything means that poor quality can slip through. Jim Oberg called this a few years ago, when he said that Russia was a fading player in the launch market, specifically due to deteriorating quality control. If they can’t or won’t control rampant corruption in the country, it’s going to cost them in many many ways. Oil money goes only so far, as they are finding out.
The Soviet era was also absolutely corrupt. Hendrick Smith, NY Times Russia bureau chief in the ’70s, wrote at the time about factories where the workers used hammers to drive in screws rather than screw drivers. Everything made or built was utter crap. Some important military hardware was done properly where money and management was focused, but that was the exception.
In space they had a number of major successes, but it was within a continuous unending blizzard of failures.
When they actually got something at least into orbit before it failed, they would describe it as just a part of their never-ending Kosmos mission series. What a joke!
When the Progess just tumbled to failure, back in the thread about it, poster “Jafafa Hots” named it Kosmos 231423. ;-P :
https://disqus.com/home/dis…
A number of successes is understating it slightly. Since Sputnik the Russians have launched more than 50% of the world’s satellites and have had a success rate second to none. Even through today it is still 93% for orbital launches, better than any other nation. Yes, even the US and Europe.
Every ninth flight you crash
That stinks
Surely we can do better than that with reusable rockets once we get to look at them and harden them?
That’s 93% through a long history of different launch platforms and technology changes.
SpaceX is coming in at a point well into the era of modern launch technology. It’s a mistake, willful or otherwise, to compare to what was done over many decades.
Take the blinders off and see more than SpaceX.
Completely agree, There are no blinders on my eyes. Again you pre judge always thinking the worst
That number and rate is a bit misleading. More useful is to look at Soyuz or Progress or another rocket series alone, I should think?
Exactly. Those sorts of incorrect conclusions come from not understanding the context and parameters of the statistics in question. Despite popular notions, statistics don’t lie. Instead statistics are misrepresented, misunderstood, and misinterpreted frequently.
Lolol
The ability to assess events relative to
chance is a simple yet complex tool.
While simple counting is a far cry from statistics, I do have to say that the two courses I was required to take in statistics (for research support) in grad school did as much to change my world view as any other course- except calculus. And no, I’m not involved in a STEM-oriented career.
Indeed. And while it is easy to criticize, it is a mistake to underestimate our Russian ‘colleagues’.
During the Soviet dictatorship the number of failures were astonishing. The vast majority of Lunar missions and Mars probes failed miserably. Even Venus missions, which were the most successful, failed most of the time. (and they have deteriorated since then)
Why are you deriding the Soviet space program based on some probes that blew up in the early 60s? As I told you already, they still managed a 93% success rate in launches even counting those early failures.
You may also want to look at the US launch record of that time which was even worse. Unsuprisingly of course, as space was a new frontier and neither of those two nations could build on decades of experience.
We are talking about the Soviet program. Look at the lunar missions. SIXTY-EIGHT percent failed and they never got a person above LEO.
Lets skip the early ’60’s. What do we see? Starting in 1965 they had 62% failure, not much better than during the first years.
Lets compare to the US. Over the same time period from the first lunar probes, the US had a 33% failure rate. If you again slide to 1965 and later, the US failure rate drops to 15%. And 12 Americans walked and drove on the Moon.
As I said about the Soviets: “Some important military hardware was done properly where money and management was focused, but that was the exception.”
http://www.thespacereview.c…
To say that “The Russian equipment at least on the HSF side has been very reliable over the years.” is a gross oversimplification. There have been many “incidents” over the years that the mass media has not picked up on that were quite serious. If you dig deep, and look at the details, the Russians have largely been successful, but have also had quite serious problems along the way.
I am using the quite common metric of successful deliveries. Over fifteen years there have been 59 successful Progress deliveries to ISS (including Pirs and Poisk) and 41 successful Soyuz crew deliveries.
Assuming that TMA-15M lands safely that will be one hundred successful missions in fifteen years. Prior to the recent mishap the only previous failure occurred on a Progress mission in 2011 when a Soyuz third stage shut down early. So I don’t think it’s a stretch to refer to that track record as reliable.
Meanwhile I assume that you are referring to close calls which is a valid but separate topic. TMA-11 as an example. Unfortunately as you said close calls do not garner a lot of attention. If the close calls don’t lead to changes in culture or procedures then eventually it catches up with you and maybe that is what we are seeing.
You can cherry pick the data like this by ignoring failures of the launchers used for other missions, but that is more than a bit misleading.
If you’re playing by that metric, “successful deliveries to ISS”, every single shuttle mission to ISS and to Mir were successful by that misleading metric. But, this ignores the two failures which destroyed two orbiters and killed two crews.
There have been quite a few Proton failures in recent years (six since December of 2010). The Proton failures may be unrelated to the failures on the manned spaceflight side of the house (which uses Soyuz launch vehicles), but it does not inspire confidence. As far as Soyuz launch vehicle failures go, there have been three or four in the same time period, depending on whether this recent Soyuz/Progress failure is blamed on the Soyuz launcher or the Progress spacecraft.
Well, I guess they can always use a trampoline.
A reminder that it is difficult to make reliable a machine which cannot be reused.
🙂
It’s worse than that, these are machines which the Russians slam into the ground (first stages) or into the ocean. The only bits the Russians ever recover are the Soyuz reentry capsules. This means there is little to no opportunity to inspect flown hardware and look for ways to make it more reliable based on actual flight data.
Let’s be honest: before SpaceX, this was the case for every launch system. The Russians are not the odd man out here.
As far as launch vehicles go, the space shuttle orbiter and the shuttle SRBs are the only exceptions which spring to mind for an operational system.
That said, there have been reusable rocket powered X-vehicles. The one which goes way back, and flew many times, was the X-15. Imagine how short that program would have been if the X-15 were expendable. Those vehicles were not cheap to manufacture.
Didnt see you had already addressed that point.
X-15 was making good progress when Kennedy said time to hurry to the moon.
J2S was emphasizing some SpX value-added. The space shuttle also allowed inspection of the solids and the orbiters (not that it did a lot of good).
I believe the reason for the failure was the someone put a sensor in upside down.
NOT A problem on a reusable vehicle
It is still too early to tell if this is just mishap or something more serious, no need to use this event to advocate more money to untested US greeds yet. In the worst case, if there is a design problem that can not be easily corrected in short term, there might be a chance that ISS cannot be accessed by humans. Would that mean the white elephant ISS has a good chance to be dumped into the ocean? If so, there is a silver lining after all. >$150 B wasted for what?
‘Wasted’ for long flight duration space technology and also orbital construction and maintenance experience.
Experience that will be for naught, much like the experience gained during Apollo in myriad fields. Use it or lose it.
But Einstein seems opposed to any NASA human space exploration.
Not just a bad day for Russia-a bad day for the US and the ISS program. For another couple years the ISS is totally dependent on the Russians to keep ISS in the sky. Its a big investment not yet used for all the purposes long ago thought about. Difficulties with Progress and its booster; difficulties with Proton; difficulties with the “guest cosmonaut” commercial visitors; the US had big hopes for PR pinned on Brightman’s trip. ISS is also key to developing the US commercial human space capability. No ISS, no commercial development. A very bad week for US.
True. “No ISS, no commercial development” is just proof that the so called commercial space industry is tax dollar parasites.
I fail to see how you arrived at the conclusion that “the so called commercial space industry is tax dollar parasites”.
Nuts & nonsense.
The whole planetary communications system is highly dependent on commercial space $$, to the tune of 100s of $G. Few of us old timers really realized just how valuable that would be back before 1960, but there it is, now essential. This is not the last surprise in store.
I urge anyone who doubts the prospects for future economic benefits, to read “Mining the Sky”, by the distinguished planetary chemist John S Lewis, and a specialist on the subject.
Not sure what kind of nonsense you are trying to make. The worst justification for expensive human space flights is the so called “economic benefits”, it is to justify a thing by it’s unexpected side effects. If anyone thinks he can make money by exploring the sky, he can do it with his own money as any decent businessman would do, simple capitalism.
Pure research is rarely performed by “decent businessmen” these days. Many of the great corporate research centers of the past either do not exist anymore or have been scaled back because there is no short term profit in them. Bell Labs is an example of a once great corporate research center that is almost entirely gone today.
If corporate America won’t fund this basic research, who will pick up the slack, if not government?
Very true. Corporate labs used to be a great source of research, even primary research. Now research is either outsourced to universities or is done only to further product development.
While not specifically research, the following is the result of the same corporate mindset: I was working at a Lockheed facility when they decided they didn’t need their library anymore. The only benefit I could see to the library being shut down was that meant that a number of LM employees got some great, free books to take home and keep. I think I was able to take home about 20.
Or that the people at NASA are very very poor planners, as our genial host likes to point out.
It is hard to plan things if there is nothing to plan for.
I think human space exploration and eventual space settlement absolutely requires a space station in LEO, to develop the technology of operating and living in the space environment, and as a transfer point from inefficient chemical rockets to 10X better (in terms of specific impulse) solar or nuclear electric propulsion (which will not quite get crews out of LEO safely, due to the passage through the radiation belts. We will need some specialized LOX/LH2 crew shuttle for that, combined with SEP above, and probably a heavy-lift robotic SEP cargo carrier to get massive stuff from LEO to points beyond.)
If this is true, then we better keep the ISS and use it well, unless we want to start over with another $100G investment. There may be some argument for a new station in a lower inclination orbit, but even so I would not abandon ISS until any replacement is operational and well established. Also, I think the i = 51.6 deg ISS orbit precesses every 26 days to point a departing spacecraft trajectory at almost any point in the sky, which seems like a big energy advantage. (Maybe somebody at JPL can confirm or correct me on that. I think for an ion drive ship, departing) slowly, it would not matter so much.)
There is a difference between partnership and dependence. We need our own human launch capabililty. But we also need partnerships with other spacefaring nations, including China, which by some measures has the world’s largest GDP. We do not and are unlikely ever to have the resources to send humans to the Moon and Mars alone. Moreover, partnerships in space help mitigate tensions on the ground.
It begs the question, if the Progress and Protons are having issues, could the venerable Soyuz have issues going forward?
It prompts the question you pose. (Begging the question is something else.)
And it does give me concerns that Soyuz may be less safe than before.
In the case of Ukraine, maintaining direct contact with ordinary Russians in critical positions gives us the opportunity to understand how they feel and explain how we feel. That might motivate people on both sides to work to stop unwarranted invasions. (Iraq comes to mind.)
In the case of China,we need to establish space agency relations on a professional level, and stop our unwarranted rumor-based persecution of Chinese graduate students like Bo Jiang.That harmed international relations.
There are hackers around the world and our networks need to be secure against any. “China” has no special ability that private hackers lack. The best security strategy is to openly talk about the methods behind hacks so vulnerabilities can be corrected.
oh, my! A voice of reason!
Should we assume that you think that we’re not hacking China’s computer systems? That would be a naive belief.
Beyond cyberterrorism, the biggest issue with Chinese hacking is the massive theft of industrial, financial, and technological info. They are far behind in most areas (and hopefully will stay that way until the oppressed Chinese people are able to expel their murderous thug dictatorship)) and theft has fueled their industrial and military machines.
How long does the ISS have before it drops too low and has to be evacuated?
Hopefully something that can reboost the spacestation will be available by then.
Seems somebody should be planning to put a comsat thruster and some fuel in the trunk of a Dragon now!
Isn’t that pretty easy to do?
The Common Berthing ports that the cargo Dragon
can dock to are in the wrong positions to reboost the ISS.
I wonder if 2 electric thrusters on different sides of the centre of gravity could reboost the ISS without spinning it too much?
We can use external experiment racks as well as docking ports. The extra solar panels will have to stay clear of the main solar arrays.
Looking at the finally successful re-boost on May 16, 1.64 m/s velocity change for ~450 mt ISS, 901 s burn (http://www.nasaspaceflight…. )
thrust must be ~820 N, total impulse of 7.38E5 N-s. If the Isp was ~300 s, that required ~2460 kg of propellant.
For comparison, the Dawn SEP s/c had a ~10 kW power (at 1 AU), for thruster and spacecraft, total. But thrust was only 0.09N, 9,100X less than Progress thruster. So the NSTAR thruster on Dawn could deliver the same total impulse in something like 95 days, operating at full power 100% of the time (? maybe possible with battery backup during orbit night). Given NSAT’s Isp of ~3,100s, the same total impulse of 7.38E5 would need only about 240 kg of Xe propellant. (This could be done 4 times a year, which may be enough?)
So, it does seem that the NSTAR thrusters (2007 technology, should be better today) could solve the ISS re-boost problems, assuming they can spare 10 kW of their ~150 kW solar array power
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…, , 24 BCDUs, @6.6 kW each)
and assuming the tiny but continuous acceleration (3E-7 m/s, 3E-8 g) would not invalidate all their microgravity experiments.
This solution seems a bit too easy and obvious, so there must be issues I don’t know about ! At the time the ISS was designed, of course solar electric propulsion was not technologically ready, so SEP re-boosts could not have been specified.
Clearly new hardware and operational procedures would be required, which would take some time to bring on-line.
Looking at the Wikipedia altitude plot, and adjusting for current altitude and phase in the solar cycle, it looks to me as if ISS must be descending fast enough to need more than 1,64 m/s boost every 95 days. Current mean altitude from heavens-above is ~401 km. They seem to keep it ~50 km higher near solar max to reduce drag losses.
FWIW, any SEP propulsion module for ISS would likely have its own dedicated solar power arrays to avoid brown-outs to other systems on the station and to ensure the maximum possible power availability when thrusting.
SEPs are increasingly seen as obvious low-cost candidates for orbital altitude adjustment work and I think we’ll see them more frequently on comsats in the future. I doubt that we’ll see one flown on ISS; I doubt that any of the partners have any interest in the necessary investment of funding this late on in the project. However, any replacement vehicle from the Western bloc may include SEP as its main propulsion system and keeping a hypergolic thruster system only as an emergency auxiliary system for MMOD avoidance.
There is the slight problem that 4 * 95 days is 380 days when there are only 365 days in a year. This can be dealt with by using two sets of thrusters.
Quoting Wikipedia on NASA’s NEXT ion thruster ” NEXT can produce 6.9 kW thruster power and 236 mN thrust. It can be throttled down to 0.5 kW power, and has a specific impulse of 4190 seconds (compared to 3120 for NSTAR).”
(copied from a post I made above)
wwheaton’s post showing the required thrust by continuous ion engines got me to look deeper.
Right now chemical (or VASIMR engine) thrust is relatively large but brief to allow uninterrupted microgravity between.
The microgravity caused by drag on the ISS is of the order of 10 to the -7th gee. The .ion thruster produce 10 to the -8th gee in the opposite direction. So, net, the thruster IMPROVES the microgravity environment.
Bottom line, if the power source is available, ion thrusters would be a good thing.
There were fairly developed plans to mount a VASIMR thruster on the ISS, but after years of work, NASA recently pulled the plug.
Im glad NASA did pull the plug. VASIMR never proved it could produce any thrust at all. It only got as far as it did because an Astronaut owned the company.
There are a lot of promising Electric Propulsion concepts out there. VASIMR is not one of them.
Interesting. I’ve been wondering what the heck happened to VASIMR. Do you have any more details about what exactly tripped up the system that seemed so promising?
There’s an existing Umbrella agreement and in March of this year Ad Astra claimed they were working on a much bigger model- too big for ISS to power.
I’ve not been able to find out what went wrong aside from funding.
On the positive side, Hall effect thrusters from Busek and others seem to get more powerful every year. t would appear thrust is limited limited only by the available electric power. Wasn’t the Hall Effect thruster first developed in Russia?
The problem with low thrust ion jets is that we have to pretend that the ISS is zero-G environment for running experiments. The ion thrusters run for very long time to work. Chemical or Vasimr thrusters work in briefer pulses.
If there was not a requirement to work only in bursts, then hall thrusters, etc. would be fine.
(SEE MY OTHER COMMENT after I thought about this more)
wwheaton’s post below showing the required thrust by continuous ion engines got me to look deeper.
Right now chemical (or VASIMR engine) thrust is relatively large but brief to allow uninterrupted microgravity periods between.
The microgravity caused by drag on the ISS is of the order of 10 to the -7th gee. The .ion thruster produce 10 to the -8th gee in the opposite direction. So, net, the thruster IMPROVES the microgravity environment.
Bottom line, if the power source is available, ion thrusters would be a good thing.
I thought it did produce thrust. No?
I admit I haven’t seen any published results in the last year or so, But last I looked, It produced thrust in a vacuum chamber that was too small to let the field lines be representative of a space environment. A lot of people were skeptical that they could actually get the plasma to detach from the rocket in space.
Yes, it does work.
I, personally, wouldn’t press the panic button until several reboost attempts fail.
That said, every single cost-cutting measure in this project do seem to inevitably come back and bite NASA and Roscosmos on the backside, don’t they? This problem wouldn’t have arisen if the US propulsion module hadn’t been cancelled to save costs. The ISS project seems to be hung on a thin thread labelled “no fault tolerance and crossed fingers that we won’t need it”!
The station can be reboosted using the Russian service module. Its not preferred because the progress is more efficient.
Proton is toast.
Inmarsat satellite launch halted by rocket failure
May 18 2015
Proton Breeze M rocket suffers a fault at launch centre.
Inmarsat’s launch of its third Global Xpress satellite has been delayed after the preceding rocket launch failed.
The launch of the Proton Breeze M rocket, carrying a Centenario satellite at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Saturday, suffered a “disabling anomaly” resulting in both being destroyed.
The I-5 F3 was scheduled to be launched afterwards but has now been postponed as a Russian State Commission and ILS, Inmarsat’s launch partner, investigate the reasons for the failure.
Inmarsat’s share price dipped slightly on the news, with Inmarsat revealing in a statement that the delay is expected to have a “small negative effect on 2015 revenue and earnings.”
When I-5 F3 is launched, the three Global Xpress satellites should provide global broadband coverage.
Rupert Pearce, CEO of Inmarsat, speaking about the planned ILS launch of Inmarsat-5 F3, said: “This incident involving a failed Proton launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome is extremely unfortunate and will inevitably delay our launch plans for our third Global Xpress satellite.
“This is the third time our Global Xpress programme has suffered launch delays because of Proton launch failures. Although in the past, Proton has returned to flight within a few months of a launch failure, it will not be possible to determine the length of the delay in the launch of I-5 F3 until the cause of the Centenario launch failure is established.
“Customers are understandably anxious to see the delivery of GX services on a global basis, and as soon as we have sufficient information to ascertain the new launch date for I-5 F3, we will make the information public, as well as comment further on the impact of the delayed launch of I-5 F3.
“Meanwhile, we are pleased by the strong interest in GX services across many customer constituencies and buoyed by early revenues from I-5 F1, which is in service over EMEA and Asia, and by the successful delivery of I-5 F2 into orbit over the Americas.
“We are also reassured that I-5 F4 is currently under construction by Boeing in California, and remains on schedule for completion in mid-2016, with a potential SpaceX launch in the second half of 2016, providing us with significant mission assurance in the case of any protracted delays in Proton’s return to flight, or a failed launch of I-5 F3.”
Halting the next launch is SOP. Calling ‘toast’ seems a little premature, no?
Some of the existing contracts will (maybe) be launched. The “toast” is future business.There is about a 2 year lead time. What do you think the insurance rates will be? 6 complete failures since 2010.
“Once a leader in the rocket business, ILS has seen its share of the commercial launch market erode in recent years. The company announced its last firm contract win in January 2014, and commercial satellite owners since then have awarded the bulk of launch service deals to Arianespace and SpaceX.“
It has failed TWICE since the last order.
Other then “captive” Russian payloads and giveaways I don’t see business for the Proton.
“The 5,325-kilogram Centenario satellite, a 702HP geo-mobile spacecraft built by Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems, was insured for about $390 million, according to insurance officials
D’oh!
Immarsat has a Falcon Heavy contract for next year. With the low-cost FH and the high-cost, but reliable, Ariane V, I bet dollars to donuts that they will never fly Proton again.
You have a really long quote that does not support that Proton is toast. They are bringing on Angara though, which they intend will eventually replace most everything except Soyuz I believe. Krunichev made both Proton and Angara.
Proton has not had a single contract in almost a year and a half, and have had TWO total failures since then.
“In the past two years, Europe-based Arianespace and SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, have divided the commercial market between them. Commercial fleet operators have steered clear of Proton since SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has demonstrated an ability to lift 5,000-kilogram satellites into orbit.
…
Inmarsat’s Global Xpress Ka-band service needs three satellites to form an unbroken ring of coverage worldwide. Two are already in orbit, and Inmarsat recently told investors that the third would be launched in June, enabling GlobalXpress service to offer worldwide coverage later this year.
There is no Plan B for Inmarsat and the other ILS customers awaiting launch. Arianespace is full into 2017, and SpaceX’s launch manifest is also full for the rest of the year at least.
There you go 🙂 I read that one too.
Mind-meld
If the Russians are besides themselves, think of the ExoMars folks. Here they have a Mars mission wedded to a Proton launch in 2018, and Russia has not had a successful Mars mission in decades, despite many attempts. Feels like a Perfect Storm. Is it superstitious to be worried ?!
Andrew M Swallow: A little worse is my realization that 1.64 m/s boost in 95 days is probably not enough to overcome drag at 350-400 km, and more power will likely be required. So if we are serious about keeping ISS up until or beyond 2024 in the possible absence of Russian help with station keeping (as I personally very much hope we are), I think these problems can be overcome fairly easily, but we probably ought to start thinking about how to do it and planning for the event.
Russia Deputy PM and space director TRASHES Proton:
Russian deputy PM attacks space industry with reform bill
May 19, 2015
MOSCOW (AFP) –
A Russian deputy prime minister on Tuesday lambasted the country’s beleaguered space industry as inefficient and corrupt, as he presented proposed reform measures to parliament.
Speaking several days after the latest failures in the sector — including the botched launch of a Proton rocket that led to the loss of a Mexican satellite — Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the industry was plagued by “morally decayed” officials and underpayed personnel.
He reserved the most biting criticism for the Khrunichev space centre, which produces the Proton rockets.
After the latest failure, investigators launched probes targeting the lab’s ex-employees for allegedly falsifying documents and causing a loss of nine billion rubles ($180 million, 161 million euros), Rogozin said.
“With such high moral decay of its leadership, one should not be surprised at the product’s poor quality,” he said.
He said the latest accident with the Proton rocket is identical to two other accidents in 1988 and 2014, which shows that the high-profile probes into them “did not find the real reason” for the malfunction.
Khrunichev employs 13 times the people working at Orbital Sciences, a US firm which launches supply missions to the International Space Station, Rogozin said, while in general the US space industry is “nine times more efficient” than the Russian one.
The hawkish deputy prime minister, who is in charge of defence and space sectors in the government, warned that Russia was on its way towards losing its competitive edge in space, as he presented bills that the government believes will begin to fix the problems.
The proposed measures are aimed at streamlining the industry by reorganising the federal space agency Roscosmos into a “state corporation”, and boosting salaries for staff.
The production of rockets and spacecraft would become more computerised and automated, Rogozin said, hinting at future layoffs from the bloated workforce.
Many engineers working in the industry make only 30,000 rubles ($600) per month and are able to make ends meet only by living in dormitories far from Moscow, he said.
“People must be paid an adequate salary,” he said. “If we want to keep them in the country… to keep them in the industry, we must pay them adequately.”
“We still don’t know what digital design is in the industry,” he said. “It’s an embarrassment, we are still stuck at the turn of the century.”
“We need a guaranteed and inexpensive access to space,” he said, lowering the cost associated with space launches by several times.
“Only then we can keep our competitiveness,” he added.