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On Saturday, 8-Oct-05, the European Space Agency’s Cryosat satellite was launched from northern Russia with a mission to survey the polar ice caps, but is seems that Cryosat didn’t make it. The satellite failed to make it scheduled communications with control, and it is feared that the second and third stages of Roket launcher—an adapted ICBM—failed to separate, and the $210 Million USD hardware crashed to the sea along with the second stage.
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Ouch
OK, who forgot to plug in the second stage?
Wait, so they’re not sure? Wouldn’t they know?
On any kind of launch, accuracy of the tracking instrumentation depends not only on the skill of the operators, but of the quality of the equipment and its location to the launch site.
For instance:
Radot or Super Radot Telescopes
Type of Telemetry systems
Type and capability of fixed and/or mobile camera and video systems
Type of C-Band Observables Radar
Type of tracking radar. For example the ALTAIR at Regan Testing Range is a high-sensitivity, wide-bandwidth, coherent, instrumentation and tracking radar. ALTAIR supports several operating modes, including tracking and signature collection at VHF and UHF. Target resolution in VHF is 37 meters; in UHF, target resolution is 15 meters.
The ALTAIR system provides a large repertoire of narrow- and wide-band waveforms. The high sensitivity and relatively wide beamwidth of the radar make the instrument ideal for viewing dispersed targets. The same characteristics make the radar ideal for tracking space objects out to and beyond synchronous orbit.
Then are the tracking radars beacon sensitive only, or have skin tracking ability. Skin being the rocket’s casing.
Also depending on civilian influence to the launch area. People living nearby, public and commercial transportation, shipping, and etc. will affect the power output allowed for the tracking instrumentation. Otherwise the closer people are the less power your radar systems can emit.
All of these systems are weather and radiation sensitive. Radiation being solar flares and man made types, which can cause problems with tracking the bird at launch and/or re-entry.
As a rocket moves through the atmosphere, heat is generated on the skin. This can and will disrupt data being sent to the ground. So unless they were able to get good data, which it sounds like they did not, then they either needed to recover the wreckage to verify the bird (satellite) was not still on the second stage, or received the bird’s song once she was in orbit. In this case none of the three things occurred, so it is anyone’s best guess as to the final resting place of the package.