European Ice Satellite Lost By Rocket Launcher

LAUNCH PAD

Cryosat was to be a major EO program to study and monitor polar ice.

Moscow (AFP) Oct 08, 2005
A European satellite dedicated to the study of ice that was to have been put into orbit on Saturday fell into the sea after its Russian launcher failed, Russian space officials said.

The 140-million-euro (170-million-dollar) CryoSat satellite was to have scanned the thickness of polar ice sheets and floating sea ice to an unprecedented accuracy, as part of an effort to understand global warming.

"We suppose that the satellite with its booster fell at the site intended for that purpose, into the Lincoln Sea, near the North Pole," Lieutenant General Oleg Gromov, deputy commander of the Russian Space Forces, was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS news agency.

"The satellite did not go into orbit because of a dysfunction in the final stage ... the Rockot launcher," Vyacheslav Davidenko, spokesman for the Russian Space Agency was quoted as saying by Interfax.

The Russian-built Rockot launcher carrying the CryoSat, a 711-kilo (1,564-pound) European Space Agency (ESA) satellite, blasted off at 1502 GMT from Russia's northwestern Plesetsk cosmodrome, and was to have put it in orbit about 90 minutes later.

The Rockot is a converted Soviet-era SS-19 ballistic missile with an additional Breeze-KM upper stage.

Earlier the ESA said it feared the satellite had been lost as it had not received a signal from the craft.

The ESA official in charge of the CryoSat project, Pascal Gilles, told AFP that they had received confirmation from the Russians that the satellite had been lost.

CryoSat was the first in a series of six ESA "Earth Explorer" satellites designed to explore key environmental problems.

Satellite data suggest that this ice cover has been shrinking at around three percent per year since the 1970s, although information about its thickness -- a critical factor in how serious the problem could be -- remains sketchy.

Last month, US researchers said the Arctic ice cap is now at its smallest for more than a century.

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LAUNCH PAD

CryoSat Launch Will Be A Blast From The Cold War Past

Paris, France (ESA) Sep 26, 2005
CryoSat's 8 October flight atop its Rockot launcher will be of historical significance in more ways than one. In a striking juxtaposition of new and old, the ESA ice satellite mated to a newly-finished Breeze-KM upper stage will be hauled most of the way to orbit by a vintage SS-19 two-stage rocket, first assembled two decades ago to serve as a weapon of nuclear war.

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