Cohete Soyuz falla y fuerza aterrizaje de emergencia

Soyuz Rocket Launch Failure Forces Emergency Landing for US-Russian Space Station Crew

By Meghan Bartels, Space.com Senior Writer | Space

A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a new U.S.-Russian crew to the International Space Station failed during its ascent Thursday (Oct. 11), sending its crew capsule falling back toward Earth in a ballistic re-entry, NASA officials said. A search-and-rescue team has reached the landing site, both crewmembers are in good condition and have left the Soyuz capsule as of 6:10 a.m. EDT, NASA spokesperson Brandi Dean said during live television commentary. Russian space agency Roscosmos has released photographs of both astronauts being checked over after their abrupt landing



Astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos leader Dmitry Rogozin are shown in a photograph taken after the Soyuz capsule's launch abort on Oct. 11, 2018. Credit: Roscosmos 

The Soyuz rocket and its Soyuz MS-10 space capsule lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at about 4:47 a.m. EDT (0847 GMT) with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin aboard. The pair were due to join the three-person Expedition 57 crew already aboard the International Space Station. But something went wrong minutes after liftoff, sending the Soyuz capsule into a ballistic re-entry, NASA officials said.

"Confirming again that the today's Soyuz MS10 launch did go into a ballistic re-entry mode a little bit after its launch," Dean said during live television commentary. "That means the crew will not be going to the International Space Station today. Instead they'll be taking a sharp landing, coming back to Earth."

The three astronauts currently on board the space station have been informed of the failed launch and their schedule for the day is being reshuffled, since they'll no longer be able to greet the incoming duo. Mission control told astronauts aboard the space station that during the landing, "the boys" experienced forces of about 6.7 G in a call that NASA later broadcast on the live commentary.
The pair landed about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. "Search and rescue crews are always pre-staged in the event something like this does happen," Dean added. Helicopters have already dispatched to look for the Soyuz space capsule, she said.

The crew is returning to Earth in a ballistic descent mode. Teams are working to obtain additional information from our Russian partners. Watch live updates: https://t.co/mzKW5uDsTi pic.twitter.com/kWigYS1gU4

— NASA (@NASA) 11 de octubre de 2018

A Soyuz capsule carrying two astronauts lifted off at 4:39 a.m. EDT on Oct. 11, 2018, before a failure later in the launch sequence. Credit: NASA TV 

NASA has not provided much detail about the failure, but confirmed in a tweet that there was a problem with booster separation. Dean later confirmed the anomaly during live commentary. During the live broadcast of the launch, narration from Mission Control suggested that the booster failed to separate from the Soyuz capsule.

NASA has confirmed that Roscosmos has already created a commission to investigate the cause of the anomaly, although it doesn't expect its counterpart to hold a press conference today. Hague and Ovchinin are being taken from their emergency landing site to Moscow. In a statement, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine confirmed he had been informed the two crewmembers were safe.
"NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and the NASA team are monitoring the situation carefully," the statement continued. "NASA is working closely with Roscosmos to ensure the safe return of the crew. Safety of the crew is the utmost priority for NASA. A thorough investigation into the cause of the incident will be conducted."
The launch failure follows close on the heels of another Soyuz issue, in which a hole was discovered Aug. 29 on the MS-09 spacecraft that delivered the most recent crew to the space station. That 0.08-inch (2-millimeter) hole in the orbital module of the Soyuz vehicle created a small air leak on the space station that was detected by flight controllers on the ground and ultimately repaired by astronauts and cosmonauts on the space station. An investigation into that anomaly and how the hole was formed is also underway.

Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague pose in front of the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft during prelaunch training Sept. 26, 2018. Credit: Victor Zelentsov/NASA

Had the launch gone smoothly, Ovchinin and Hague would have reached the space station later today. The Soyuz was scheduled to fly a shortened, six-hour flight trajectory that would have orbited the Earth four times before reaching the International Space Station.
This story will be updated as more information is available.

Mas dudas que certezas sobre la explosión del SpaceX

SpaceX’s Mysterious Rocket Explosion Gets a Little Bit Clearer



Wired
ON THE MORNING of September 1, just before a routine pre-flight ignition test, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded. In an instant, the 277 foot-tall space vehicle and its $200 million satellite cargo disappeared into a ball of flames.

SpaceX has been fairly mum with details on what went wrong last month on Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. Which makes sense. But, considering it is SpaceX’s second launch failure in 15 months, the explosion is a more tangible measure of the company’s future than its highly-publicized (and hypothetical) plan to settle Mars. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the problem may have been operational—rather than a manufacturing or design flaw of the rocket itself. But that does not mean the case is that simple. Nothing involving rockets ever is.

The investigation itself is a collaborative effort between SpaceX, the FAA, NASA, the US Air Force, and industry experts. Together, they are looking at over 3,000 channels of engineering data, along with video, audio and imagery, the company said. Early rumors speculated that SpaceX was worried about potential sabotage by rival space firms, and were reviewing images of strange shadow on a building next to the launch site . But mostly, the investigation has focused on the second stage liquid oxygen tank.

Or more specifically, on the cryogenic helium system insidethe liquid oxygen tank. Basically, this is the fuel that would have helped the Falcon 9’s cargo—an Amos-6 communications satellite—maneuver from Low Earth Orbit into Geostationary Transfer Orbit. But even that level of detail masks a confounding number of possibilities.

To start, whether a design flaw, or some part of the pre-flight process, caused the explosion. “It could be good if it turns out to be an operational problem, because that is easily remedied, rather than a design or manufacturing problem,” said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. “But you have to ask why did that operation failure happen. Was their lack of training or understanding of what was going on?” Pace said he’d like to know whether investigators from SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees the accident probe, have proof that the fueling failure was what occurred, or did they eliminate other faults and the fueling operation what was remained? “Was it that people felt rushed?” Pace said. “Was there schedule pressure, were they doing something innovative. Was it something else?”

Officially, SpaceX isn’t saying much. A spokesman referred Wired to an earlier statement that “a preliminary review of the data and debris suggests that a large breach in the cryogenic helium system of the second stage liquid oxygen tank took place. At this time, the cause of the potential breach remains unknown.”


Other members of the investigation are playing just as coy. NASA officials in Washington referred questions to the FAA’s Office of Commercial Spaceflight. And the FAA spokesman for that office did not answer questions regarding the probe. Which means experts and amateurs in the space-interested public can only speculate.

The investigation itself might inevitably hit a wall of conjecture. “They are looking at some of the charred remains to see what part failed and was there a manufacturing problem,” says Marco Caceres, a space industry analyst at the Vienna, VA, based Teal Group. “Or was it just a one of those freak accidents? I’m not sure they are every going to know exactly.”

The timeline of the explosion was extremely short – from first signs of an anomaly to loss of data was about 93 milliseconds or less than 1/10th of a second. And though the investigators have access to thousands of datastreams from that short period, they would have had much more if the explosion had occurred when the rocket were launching, or in flight. Then, thousands of cameras would have been streaming info from all angles of the rocket, and additional sensors would be feeding into flight control computers.

For his contribution to the speculation, Caceres noted that a fueling failure could occur from a small piece of brittle metal that begins vibrating, breaks apart, lodges into a fuel line and causes combustion. SpaceX is testing this sort of malfunction at its McGregor, TX, facility.

Finding out what happened to this rocket is important. The Falcon 9 is SpaceX’s workhorse, scheduled to carry the brunt of the 70 commercial satellite launches—a $10 billion backlog—waiting to go into orbit. Oh and also, the rocket is part of SpaceX’s bid for a $2.6 billion NASA contract to send astronauts to the International Space Station.

Those ISS crew flights have already been delayed until 2018 at the earliest, three years past NASA’s original launch date, according to a NASA Inspector General’s report released the day of the explosion.

SpaceX has lost only two of its 29 launches. Until the investigation bears out, nobody will know if those failures follow any kind of pattern. In the meantime, Musk’s company continues to sign up new customers. Should those customers be worried? Well, there’s no simple answer.

Hace un año un robot militar yanqui labura en el espacio

ONE YEAR AGO TODAY, THE AIR FORCE PUT A SECRET ROBOT IN SPACE


IT'S STILL THERE, DOING SECRET SPACE ROBOT THINGS...
By Kelsey D. Atherton - Popular Science

X-37B Ready

Mr. X-37B, bring me a treat from space

Today marks one year since the Air Force’s X-37B secret robotic space plane last launched into space, as Spaceflight Now notes. It is still there, doing the secret things a robot space plane does. Things like test a new ion engine and maybe track other space stations. It’s spent 15 months and longer in orbit before, doing secret space stuff, so we can expect it to spend some more time there doing secret space things secretly. As a secret space robot. Because this is the world we live in, now. One with secret robots in space.

Emprendimiento privado logra "alunizar" exitosamente

Si este emprendimiento lo hubiese financiado el Ministerio de Planificación con De Vido a la cabeza, hubiese costado 100 veces más debido a las coimas y hubiese fracasado como el Tronador 2, que era una apuesta más segura que la de un módulo de aterrizaje lunar.

Video: Watch A Privately-Funded Moon Lander's Fiery Test
What goes up must come down—very, very softly.
By Francie Diep


Astrobotic Autolanding System Astrobotic Technology
It's not easy to land a robot on the moon. Only the U.S., the former Soviet Union, and China have succeeded; other nations have only managed to make debris-strewn craters with their landing vehicles.

Eighteen privately funded groups, however, think they can safely land a privately funded spacecraft in 2015, rove around the lunar surface, and claim tens of millions of dollars in prize money for the feat.

To that end, a Pittsburgh-based company called Astrobiotic has released a three-minute video (below) showing off its progress in developing moon-landing technology. The company is one of the teams competing for the Google Lunar X Prize, which will award $20 million to the first group that lands on the moon, moves its spacecraft a third of a mile, and sends HD video back to Earth. (Popular Science reported on Astrobiotic's planned lander and rover in our April 2014 issue; see illustrations of the vehicles and learn how they work.)

Astrobiotic tested its latest landing vehicle in California's Mojave Desert on February 21. On the moon, the robot will use two cameras, an inertial measurement unit, and a laser scanner to see where it's going. Then it will match these data against satellite maps of the lunar surface and automatically decide where to land. In the February 21 test, however, all of its instruments took in data passively without making decisions, so that engineers could test whether the instruments were accurate.

The company seemed pleased with the results. "The test campaign validated performance of pose estimation and hazard detection in a flight-relevant environment," Astrobotic said in a statement. How big of a hazard could the company's technology detect? Rocks and craters as small as a soccer ball, according to the statement.

Watch a lander's-eye view of their test, below.

Explotó el Tronador II

Estalló a dos metros del suelo un cohete de fabricación nacional

POR GUIDO BRASLAVSKY

Fue en la prueba de lanzamiento. Es un prototipo de los vehículos con que buscan llevar satélites al espacio. Clarín

La Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) intentó lanzar la semana pasada el primer cohete experimental del ambicioso proyecto Tronador II, que se propone desarrollar cohetes de transporte para poner satélites en órbita. Después de varias postergaciones por razones técnicas o climáticas, el lanzamiento se hizo el último miércoles 26 de febrero. Pero el vector Vex 1A, que logró despegar unos dos metros, en una fracción de segundo torció su trayectoria y se estrelló contra el suelo envuelto en las llamas de su propio combustible, según pudo reconstruirse.

El Gobierno manejó las cosas casi en secreto: evitó difundir el lanzamiento -no hubo prensa ni se comunicó la fecha- y tampoco dio información sobre sus resultados. Lo cierto es que hasta la localidad de Pipinas, partido de Punta Indio, llegaron el miércoles para presenciar el despegue el ministro de Planificación, Julio de Vido, el secretario general de la Presidencia, Oscar Parrilli, y el titular de la SIGEN, Daniel Reposo. La CONAE -cuyo director es el físico Conrado Varotto- fue transferida a fines de 2012 de la Cancillería a la órbita de Planificación, donde De Vido le dio impulso al Tronador II con un presupuesto multimillonario.

La plataforma de lanzamiento está en Punta Piedras, frente al Río de la Plata, a pocos kilómetros del faro de la Bahía de Samborombón. Pese al secretismo que se impuso al asunto, en la zona debió alertarse del lanzamiento debido a que por protocolo, la policía local ordenó la evacuación de 8 kilómetros a la redonda, contó a Clarín Gerardo Landa, que es presidente de la Sociedad Rural de Punta Indio y cuyo campo está en la zona “de protección”. Este primer lanzamiento ya se había abortado en diciembre, y hubo intentos a mediados de enero y el 24 de febrero.

El día señalado De Vido y los funcionarios llegaron en helicóptero, sobrevolaron la zona y bajaron en la cancha del Complejo Municipal de Pipinas, donde está el centro de control y monitoreo, y donde se aprieta “el botón” para lanzar el cohete.

Allí esperaban el intendente de Punta Indio, Hernán Yzurieta, científicos y técnicos de la CONAE, de la fabricante Veng y de la Facultad de Ingeniería de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Cuando todos estaban acomodados en un salón que antes fue un viejo cine, a eso de las 15 el botón se pulsó para el despegue. Pero el cohete de casi 15 metros de largo, apenas se elevó y cayó partiéndose al medio, al parecer por problemas con tensores neumáticos que enganchan el motor. La expectativa mayor era que viajara 300 metros y cayera en el río, donde se recuperarían parte de sus materiales.

Aunque según testimonios la gente ligada al proyecto estaba “deprimida”, otros expertos destacaron que esta fue la primera prueba, y que restan lanzarse de tres a seis cohetes experimentales más. El diario digital El Colono de Punta Indio citó a Marcos Actis, decano de Ingeniería de La Plata, quien afirmó que el lanzamiento “fue un éxito” porque “el cohete se elevó”.

“Por ahí para el que no está en tema se prendió fuego, pero para nosotros estuvo perfecto”, dijo.

Otro punto es el ambiental: la plataforma de lanzamiento está en una reserva de biosfera reconocida por la UNESCO. “Aquí se dijo que los combustibles que se utilizan son muy contaminantes si derraman, pero se explicó que al quemarse no contaminan”, indicó el productor Landa.

Clarín se comunicó ayer con Planificación y con la CONAE, que no contestaron a los pedidos de información. El Complejo Municipal de Pipinas -el “Houston” argentino-, estuvo abierto a visitantes por su interés científico. Pero para este primer despegue, de las autoridades locales sólo entró el intendente. Para llegar al lugar del lanzamiento, a 11 kilómetros de Pipinas, el último tramo debe hacerse por un camino de conchilla, y luego de trasponerse una tranquera hay instalado un trailer con personal de seguridad que no permite el paso.

Colaboró: Rodolfo Lara (La Plata. Corresponsal)

Suiza y Francia lanzarán satelites

Dassault asiste proyecto suizo de nave de lanzamiento de satélites 
por Fernando "Nunão" De Martini 


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Empresa francés contribuirá con la S3 suiza con su experiencia en el diseño de vehículos aeroespaciales, y con los conocimientos adquiridos en aviones avanzados como el Rafale y el jet Falcon de negocios 
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De acuerdo con un comunicado emitido el 13 de marzo por Dassault Aviation, la compañía participa en un proyecto liderado por "Sistemas de société suizos Espaciales (S3), que desarrolla un espacio nef para lanzar pequeños satélites (250 kg) en órbita terrestre baja (entre 600 y 800 kilometros de altitud). Los primeros lanzamientos están previstos para 2017. 

Dassault Aviation ha unido al proyecto S3, que es una cooperación de Suiza y los asociados internacionales de prestigio como la ESA, "le Von Karman Institute," Sonaca, Meggitt y la Universidad de Stanford. Dassault contribuirá con su experiencia en el diseño de vehículos aeroespaciales, tales como el concepto de lanzador VEHRA (Hypersonic vehículo aéreo reutilizable) y proyectos con la NASA (la agencia espacial de los EE.UU.), así como el equipo de las aeronaves modernas como el jet Rafale y Falcon. 



La compañía también dijo en un comunicado que existe una fuerte relación aeronáutico establecido con Suiza comenzó en la década de 1960 con el Mirage III, que se mantuvo en servicio hasta el año 2003 en ese país. Esta relación con Dassault Suiza continuó en la cooperación industrial y académica, incluyendo la participación de la empresa suiza RUAG con el programa Neuron, liderado por la empresa francesa. 



FUENTES / ILUSTRACIONES través de Dassault (traducción y edición de poderío aéreo del original en francés) 

Poder Aéreo