5 Yrs After Crash, Scientists Cross Fingers For Ice-Measurement Satellite Launch 8 April - Guardian

[hatrack]

Climate scientists are not usually concerned about the launch of new satellites. But at 2:57pm on 8 April, a UK-led team will be keeping everything crossed as the €140m CryoSat-2 satellite lifts off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Any uncharacteristic superstition will be because these scientists have tasted bitter disappointment before: five years ago, the precursor CryoSat probe crashed into the sea minutes after launch, destroying years of work in the process.

The European Space Agency (Esa) CryoSat-2 mission will provide scientists with measurements of the thickness of Arctic and Antarctic ice with an accuracy unmatched until now. Scientists will then be able to track how melting polar ice is affecting ocean currents, sea levels and the overall global climate. Duncan Wingham, a climate physicist at University College London and the lead scientist for both missions, is hoping this will be second time lucky. "Satellites have transformed our knowledge of what is happening to these distant and uninhabited parts of the planet. CryoSat-2 will help unravel the consequences of the dramatic changes in the poles that we've seen in the past two decades."

Wingham said that, without CryoSat-2, scientists would miss out on a major source of data to track climate change. Earlier Earth-observation missions from Esa have included Envisat and the European remote-sensing Satellite missions. "The data we do have is patchy because the instrumentation on the earlier generation of satellites was not designed to deal with the ice-sheet task," said Wingham.

The first CryoSat mission was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia on 8 October 2005, but it crashed into the Arctic Ocean shortly afterwards, due to a malfunction in the launch vehicle. Fortunately, approval for a successor mission to CryoSat was given by Esa within months of the accident. The new probe was built using improved electronics and batteries, and an extra radar altimeter, a device that will fire microwaves at the Arctic and Antarctic ice to reveal its overall thickness.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/30/satellite-launch-arctic-ice-measurement

[joshcryer]

1. Dang, I didn't know about that one. This reminds me of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (Oco).

Orbiting Carbon Observatory (Oco) also crashed. The primary cause was thought to be a pryo failing to fire. Let me explain. Bolts holding vehicles in their payload are best undone by an explosion. It sounds very low tech, but it's the most reliable way to separate a vehicle from its fairing. Pyros simply don't fail, once they ignite they explode.

Now, these pyros have safeties on them, so that people working on the vehicle before it goes into the payload bay won't get hurt (common practice with all explosives).

Given that engineers, the guys who would be putting the payload in, and would be checking the safeties, are typically prone to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis">anti-scientific sentiment, my pet theory is that a disgruntled engineer either intentionally or unconsciously forgot to remove the safety on the pyros.

Oco then fell smack dab into the ocean when it could not separate from the rocket.