Daily Image
11-10-2010
Disastrous test flight of red and white rocket.
| Submitter: | Ramon Navarro |
| Description: | The well known red and white rocket was physically launched during the coffee break today. The rocket was presented during the cabaret at the reception of Yde Koopman last Thursday and served very well in a virtual roll out of LOFAR on the moon. During this operation it fell into the hands of Russian cosmonauts, but remarkably ASTRON regained possession of the spacecraft quite soon. Since then it was proudly standing on the rooftop terrace at ASTRON in Dwingeloo awaiting further duties. 2010 October 5th at 10:30 hours: Launch! Unfortunately a major anomaly occurred directly after launch. The maximum height reached during flight was only 6 meters, which is the height of the railing at the rooftop terrace that served as the launch platform plus the size of the rocket itself. The spacecraft broke into two pieces and made a hard landing only a few meters away, miraculously missing all the cars on the parking lot. A root cause analysis of the anomaly during launch revealed several flaws. First of all the absence of any propellant required this launch to be solely human powered. Secondly the countdown was not according to procedure and did not mention important milestones such as: ‘ignition’, ‘main engines running’ and most importantly ‘lift off’. After this disastrous test flight it was decided not to pursue rocket science any longer and focus on the design, manufacture and test of satellites instead. We found the ARIANE V rocket to be a very suitable spacecraft to launch the JWST satellite with our precious MIRI instrument. The launch for JWST is planned for 2015 and we await this moment anxiously! |
| Copyright: | Ramon Navarro |
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