Cosmos 1
| Cosmos 1 | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Type: | Technology testing satellite |
| Operator: | Planetary Society |
| Mission dates | |
| Dimensions: | 100 kg |
| Begin: | June 21, 2005, 19:46 UTC |
| Starting place: | Barents Sea , 69.5 ° N 34.2 ° E |
| Launcher: | Volna |
| Status: | crashed on false start |
| Orbit data | |
| Track height: | 800 km (planned) |
Cosmos 1 was a project of the Planetary Society and was intended to test the suitability of a space drive through solar sails . The launch vehicle with the satellite crashed on June 21, 2005.
financing
The $ 4 million project was entirely privately funded. The main contractual partner for the development of the 100 kg satellite was the Russian space company NPO Lavochkin . The private organizations Cosmos Studios and the Planetary Society, which was founded by Carl Sagan , Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman , initiated and promoted the project. The American Planetary Society paid $ 2.5 million of the estimated cost of the cosmic sailing experiments.
Planned course of the mission
The launch should take place with a Wolna rocket, a converted submarine-based ICBM of the type R-29RL. The planned height of the orbit was 800 km. After the solar sails opened a few days after take-off, the scientists involved expected to be able to use the transmission of impulses through sunlight to increase the height of the orbit in a targeted manner. After a mission time of about a month, the sun sail made of coated Mylar should dissolve due to the UV radiation.
Start and crash
The launch was originally planned for the end of 2001, but was delayed several times until June 21, 2005. The Volna was fired from the Russian submarine Borisoglebsk , which was submerged in the Barents Sea . It was the first attempt to reach Earth orbit with a Volna; the three previous flights were suborbital.
Shortly after the start on June 21, 2005 at 21:46 CEST , ground control in Moscow reported that it could no longer establish contact with the probe. On June 22, 2005, Russian sources announced that the rocket's first stage shut down 83 seconds after launch. It is assumed that thereupon the further stages did not separate from the first stage and that the entire rocket and its payload went down in the ocean about six minutes after launch.
The Planetary Society, on the other hand, initially provided information that they had brief contact via Kamchatka immediately after the launch and possible contacts via two other ground stations with the satellite. It was therefore suspected that Cosmos 1 entered an unscheduled orbit , which is why the ground stations could not receive its signal correctly. The American military searched space for the satellite and amateur astronomers were asked for help.
Shortly after this call, a spokeswoman for the Russian engineering firm NPO Lavochkin announced on June 24, 2005 that the probe had not detached from the rocket and had fallen to earth with it. Later, the signals received by the ground stations turned out to be misinterpretations, so that a failure of the first rocket stage is now the cause of the error.
future
After the loss of Cosmos 1, the Planetary Society planned a follow-up mission, Cosmos 2 , to be launched as a secondary payload on a Soyuz / Fregat flight. The Kosmos-3M and US launch vehicles were also considered. The project has now been renamed LightSail .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Planetary Society in the Encyclopedia Astronautica , accessed on September 28, 2012 (English).
- ↑ Louis D. Friedman: New Developments on the Road to Cosmos June 2, 23, 2008, accessed on September 28, 2012 (English).
- ↑ Bruce Betts: Solar Sail Update: New Opportunities. April 1, 2009, accessed on September 28, 2012 (English): "Our colleagues at NASA have suggested that the spacecraft could piggy-back on a US launch, and our Russian team have urged us to consider the use of the Russian Cosmos- 3M. We will not consider Volna again. "
- ↑ LightSail-1. The Planetary Society, accessed September 28, 2012 .
Web links
- Spaceflight Now: Success of solar sail launch unknown (English)
- The Planetary Society: The End of Cosmos 1, the Beginning of the Next Chapter (English)