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Russia's Proton crashes with a trio of navigation satellites,
Russia's Proton rocket crashed less than a minute after its liftoff from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. A Proton-M with a Block DM-03 upper stage lifted off as scheduled from Pad No. 24 at Site 81 in Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 2, 2013, at 06:38:22 Moscow Time (on July 1, 10:38 p.m. EDT).
The rocket started veering off course right after leaving the pad, deviating from the vertical path in various directions and then plunged to the ground seconds later nose first. The payload section and the upper stage were sheered off the vehicle moments before it impacted the ground and exploded. The flight lasted no more than 30 seconds.
The Russian space agency's ground processing and launch contractor, TsENKI, was broadcasting the launch live and captured the entire process of the vehicle's disintegration and its crash. Half an hour after the accident, a report on Russian web forums said that a team in the launch control bunker near the launch pad had been in communication with the rest of the space center and apparently had been unharmed. The launch vehicle reportedly crashed near another launch complex for Proton rockets at Site 200.
Since the emergency cutoff of the first stage engines is blocked during the first 42 seconds of the flight to ensure that the rocket clears the launch complex, the vehicle continued flying with its propulsion system firing practically until the impact on the ground.
According to the local Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, the launch vehicle crashed one kilometer from the launch complex. However veterans of the facility looking at the video of the accident, estimated the distance at around five kilometers. It was later established that the rocket fell slightly more than one kilometer southeast of Pad No. 24, short of the main rail line connecting Proton area with the rest of the center and not far from a Silo facility at Site 175.
Culprit found
By July 9, it is transpired that investigators sifting through the wreckage of the doomed rocket had found critical angular velocity sensors, DUS, installed upside down. Each of those sensors had an arrow that was suppose to point toward the top of the vehicle, however multiple sensors on the failed rocket were pointing downward instead. As a result, the flight control system was receiving wrong information about the position of the rocket and tried to "correct" it, causing the vehicle to swing wildly and, ultimately, crash. The paper trail led to a young technician responsible for the wrong assembly of the hardware, but also raised serious issues of quality control at the Proton's manufacturing plant, at the rocket's testing facility and at the assembly building in Baikonur. It appeared that no visual control of the faulty installation had been conducted, while electrical checks could not detect the problem since all circuits had been working correctly.
On the Proton rocket multiple DUS sensors are clustered into modules called Blocks of Damper Gyroscopes or BDG in Russian. They are designed to provide navigational information to Proton's sophisticated multi-channel flight control system. A total of three BDG modules are mounted on a special platform on the body of the rocket. The evaluation of the recovered platform showed that three BDGs responsible for the pitch movement of the rocket were installed correctly, however all three BDGs responsible for the course axis were rotated 180 degrees. Since all three BDGs had been installed incorrectly, the three-channel flight control system could not filter out faulty data by comparing it to correct information coming from the majority of sensors.
The improper installation apparently required some considerable physical effort, which, somehow did not raise any alarm at GKNPTs Khrunichev's assembly plant in Moscow. Investigators immediately looked at already assembled Protons, including those in Baikonur, but did not find such an anomaly.
The BDG modules are developed at the Zvezda enterprise on the Gorodomlya Island and manufactured in the city of Saratov. Both organizations are parts of the NPTs AP design bureau, a prime contractor responsible for the flight control system of the Proton rocket and its Block DM-03 upper stage.
The Astra 2E launch has been delayed while further checks are carried out of the launch vehicle.
info via -http://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html#culprit
Russia's Proton rocket crashed less than a minute after its liftoff from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. A Proton-M with a Block DM-03 upper stage lifted off as scheduled from Pad No. 24 at Site 81 in Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 2, 2013, at 06:38:22 Moscow Time (on July 1, 10:38 p.m. EDT).
The rocket started veering off course right after leaving the pad, deviating from the vertical path in various directions and then plunged to the ground seconds later nose first. The payload section and the upper stage were sheered off the vehicle moments before it impacted the ground and exploded. The flight lasted no more than 30 seconds.
The Russian space agency's ground processing and launch contractor, TsENKI, was broadcasting the launch live and captured the entire process of the vehicle's disintegration and its crash. Half an hour after the accident, a report on Russian web forums said that a team in the launch control bunker near the launch pad had been in communication with the rest of the space center and apparently had been unharmed. The launch vehicle reportedly crashed near another launch complex for Proton rockets at Site 200.
Since the emergency cutoff of the first stage engines is blocked during the first 42 seconds of the flight to ensure that the rocket clears the launch complex, the vehicle continued flying with its propulsion system firing practically until the impact on the ground.
According to the local Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, the launch vehicle crashed one kilometer from the launch complex. However veterans of the facility looking at the video of the accident, estimated the distance at around five kilometers. It was later established that the rocket fell slightly more than one kilometer southeast of Pad No. 24, short of the main rail line connecting Proton area with the rest of the center and not far from a Silo facility at Site 175.
Culprit found
By July 9, it is transpired that investigators sifting through the wreckage of the doomed rocket had found critical angular velocity sensors, DUS, installed upside down. Each of those sensors had an arrow that was suppose to point toward the top of the vehicle, however multiple sensors on the failed rocket were pointing downward instead. As a result, the flight control system was receiving wrong information about the position of the rocket and tried to "correct" it, causing the vehicle to swing wildly and, ultimately, crash. The paper trail led to a young technician responsible for the wrong assembly of the hardware, but also raised serious issues of quality control at the Proton's manufacturing plant, at the rocket's testing facility and at the assembly building in Baikonur. It appeared that no visual control of the faulty installation had been conducted, while electrical checks could not detect the problem since all circuits had been working correctly.
On the Proton rocket multiple DUS sensors are clustered into modules called Blocks of Damper Gyroscopes or BDG in Russian. They are designed to provide navigational information to Proton's sophisticated multi-channel flight control system. A total of three BDG modules are mounted on a special platform on the body of the rocket. The evaluation of the recovered platform showed that three BDGs responsible for the pitch movement of the rocket were installed correctly, however all three BDGs responsible for the course axis were rotated 180 degrees. Since all three BDGs had been installed incorrectly, the three-channel flight control system could not filter out faulty data by comparing it to correct information coming from the majority of sensors.
The improper installation apparently required some considerable physical effort, which, somehow did not raise any alarm at GKNPTs Khrunichev's assembly plant in Moscow. Investigators immediately looked at already assembled Protons, including those in Baikonur, but did not find such an anomaly.
The BDG modules are developed at the Zvezda enterprise on the Gorodomlya Island and manufactured in the city of Saratov. Both organizations are parts of the NPTs AP design bureau, a prime contractor responsible for the flight control system of the Proton rocket and its Block DM-03 upper stage.
The Astra 2E launch has been delayed while further checks are carried out of the launch vehicle.
info via -http://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_glonass49.html#culprit
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