Today at 21.00 CEST Mr Yuri Bakhvalov, First Deputy Director General of the Khrunichev Space Centre on behalf of the Russian State Commission officially confirmed that the launch of CryoSat ended in a failure due to an anomaly in the launch sequence and expressed his regret to ESA and all partners involved.

Preliminary analysis of the telemetry data indicates that the first stage performed nominally. The second stage performed nominally until main engine cut-off was to occur. Due to a missing command from the onboard flight control system the main engine continued to operate until depletion of the remaining fuel.

As a consequence, the separation of the second stage from upper stage did not occur. Thus, the combined stack of the two stages and the CryoSat satellite fell into the nominal drop zone north of Greenland close to the North Pole into high seas with no consequences to populated areas.

An investigating commission by the Russian State authorities has been established to further analyze the reasons for the failure, results are expected within the next weeks. This commission will work in close cooperation with a failure investigation board consisting of Eurockot, ESA and Khrunichev representatives.

This information is released at the same time by Eurockot and ESA.

Original press release: CryoSat Mission lost due to launch failure (ESA) 

Until now satellites have not been able to monitor melting of ice at the very point where it is most significant: at the ice edge. CryoSat’s ability to do just that thrills scientists working in the field.

“CryoSat will pave the way for a better understanding of what happens to the ice at the exact point where things are the most interesting: at the ice edge where the majority of the melting takes place,” says Danish glaciologist Carl Egede Bøggild.

Part of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) Bøggild heads a large-scale monitoring programme on the Greenland Ice. The programme utilises a combination of on-site measurements and satellite data.

“In principle you would prefer satellite data when you want to monitor large-scale developments,” explains Bøggild. “However it has been a major problem that satellites have had trouble monitoring the very ice edge zone.”

In order to measure the thickness of a given ice layer, a radar altimeter satellite emits a radar signal and later records it being reflected back out to space. The time taken for the signal to return can be utilised to calculate the exact ice height, from which its thickness can in turn be derived.

However the topography at the edge of an ice sheet can be very steep and uneven, making it difficult for the satellite to catch the reflected signal, or know precisely from which point within the ten-kilometre signal ‘footprint’ the signal is returning from. Often the uncertainty would be too large for the results to be reliable. The practical implication was that the entire ice edge remained inaccessible for satellite monitoring.

However the science team behind CryoSat has managed to tackle this problem. Its double-antenna design means it can measure the angle of the returning signal to put an exact location on where it comes from relative to the spacecraft track. The satellite will still be able to carry out its measurements, no matter how steep the ice surface may be.

“To my mind the ice edge is the most interesting place to do science,” the Danish glaciologist states. “In the middle of the inland ice things are very stable. As climate changes, the edge is where you will be able to observe the effect first.

“American airborne measurements have shown a thinning of the Greenland glaciers by one metre per year. However our measurements on location at the ice edge show melting on an even larger scale. Now we are anxious to learn what the measurements from CryoSat will show.”

According to on-site measurements the Sermilik glacier in Southern Greenland is thinning between two and eight metres a year. Not all of this change is linked to climate change caused by human activities. The glaciologist compares the inland ice to dough for making a loaf of bread laid out on a kitchen table: “You see a slow movement from the middle towards the edge. In the case of the inland ice it may take thousands of years from a snow flake falls in the centre until it reaches the edge.

“You might say that the system has a certain built-in memory. Some of the melting we witness now is actually an aftermath of the last, mini Ice Age which ended in the last half of the 19th century”.

Systematic monitoring of air temperature has taken place since 1875. Comparing the temperature levels with the actual melting one can determine that about half of the melting is linked to changes in climate. The other half will then have other causes – primarily the aftermath of the last Ice Age.

The Danish ice monitoring effort has found thinning of large areas of the inland ice. That goes for practically the entire ice edge zone. One interesting twist to the story is that in some areas thinning is taking place despite a drop in mean temperatures.

“This goes to show the complexity of the system,” Bøggild adds. “Normally one would use the number of days with temperatures above zero degrees as an indicator of melting. Generally these two factors would be linked. However factors other than temperature may also be influencing melting. One of them is the amount of incoming solar radiation. This would make it possible to see these kind of surprising results locally”.

Despite his great expectations for CryoSat, Carl Egede Bøggild underlines that satellites will not replace ground measurements: “Satellites will give us a far more accurate view of the amount of melting but they will not tell us why the melting is taking place. In order to improve your understanding of the causes you have to do research on site. Also we will have to keep on doing measurements on site in order to verify the findings of the satellites. We are talking about two different kinds of tools supplementing each other very well.”

Original press release: CryoSat: the ice edge holds the key (ESA)

After leaving the Space Test Centre in Germany on 29 August, CryoSat has safely arrived at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 800 km north of Moscow, Russia. CryoSat is scheduled for launch on 8 October 2005 at 15h02 UTC.

The convoy was initially transported by truck from IABG (Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH) in Ottobrunn to Munich airport, where it was stored in a hangar over night before being loaded onto an Antonov-124 cargo aircraft for the three and a half hour flight to Talagi Airport, Archangel in Russia.

The spacecraft, however, did not travel alone – it was accompanied by a whole host of vital support equipment resulting in the shipment weighing in at around 60 tonnes and valuing some 80 million euros. The CryoSat satellite was packed in its own nitrogen-pressurized container, while nine other containers housed items such as racks of electrical equipment to operate and test the spacecraft, and heavy mechanical equipment to lift and turn the satellite allowing engineers to gain overall access to the structure in the Integration Facility at the launch site.

An advance team was already in Archangel, and after they had ensured that everything was in order to receive the cargo on arrival, they gave the go-ahead for the flight from Munich to take-off. After a safe landing in Archangel in the evening of 30 August, the convoy was transported by truck to the local train station where it was lifted onto railcars. For reasons of safety and security the special train made its journey through the night, arriving in Plesetsk on 1 September. So that the cargo wasn’t at risk of being damaged the train had to travel extremely slowly. It therefore took most of the night to cover the 200 km journey southward to CryoSat’s final destination.

CryoSat’s safe arrival in Plesetsk marks an important milestone in the project. The shipment was carried out with relative ease. Guy Ratier, CryoSat Project Manager commented, “Everything went according to plan. It is not the first time that ESA has used an Antonov, a fantastic plane indeed, to transport satellites to their launch site. Loading the plane was just a routine operation. The train transport between Archangel and Plesetsk was also uneventful, thanks to the wide experience gained by Eurockot and Khrunichev during previous campaigns. For sure, I consider this transportation step as a very good start towards a successful launch campaign.”

CryoSat is the first in the series of Earth Explorer missions to be launched. Earth Explorers are small, inexpensive missions designed to provide some fast answers to a specific aspect of the Earth’s environment. In this case, CryoSat is to determine rates of change in the thickness of marine and continental ice cover.

With speed and a limited budget in mind, the CryoSat project have found an elegant solution for launch, that being a Russian Rockot vehicle, which is actually a converted SS-19 ballistic missile launcher with an additional Breeze-KM upper stage. CryoSat will be the first ESA mission launched on Rockot followed by the Earth Explorers GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) in 2006 and SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) in 2007.

Now that CryoSat has arrived, unloading and unpacking is underway and the launch campaign will begin. Members of the CryoSat team in Plesetsk will oversee the thorough final testing period before the satellite is eventually jointed to the fairing and prepared for launch on 8 October.

Original press release: CryoSat Arrives Safely at Launch Site in Russia (ESA)

Image source: ESA

After leaving the Space Test Centre in Germany on 29 August, CryoSat has safely arrived at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 800 km north of Moscow, Russia. CryoSat is scheduled for launch on 8 October 2005 at 15h02 UTC.

The convoy was initially transported by truck from IABG (Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH) in Ottobrunn to Munich airport, where it was stored in a hangar over night before being loaded onto an Antonov-124 cargo aircraft for the three and a half hour flight to Talagi Airport, Archangel in Russia.

The spacecraft, however, did not travel alone � it was accompanied by a whole host of vital support equipment resulting in the shipment weighing in at around 60 tonnes and valuing some 80 million euros. The CryoSat satellite was packed in its own nitrogen-pressurized container, while nine other containers housed items such as racks of electrical equipment to operate and test the spacecraft, and heavy mechanical equipment to lift and turn the satellite allowing engineers to gain overall access to the structure in the Integration Facility at the launch site.

An advance team was already in Archangel, and after they had ensured that everything was in order to receive the cargo on arrival, they gave the go-ahead for the flight from Munich to take-off. After a safe landing in Archangel in the evening of 30 August, the convoy was transported by truck to the local train station where it was lifted onto railcars. For reasons of safety and security the special train made its journey through the night, arriving in Plesetsk on 1 September. So that the cargo wasn’t at risk of being damaged the train had to travel extremely slowly. It therefore took most of the night to cover the 200 km journey southward to CryoSat’s final destination.

CryoSat’s safe arrival in Plesetsk marks an important milestone in the project. The shipment was carried out with relative ease. Guy Ratier, CryoSat Project Manager commented, “Everything went according to plan. It is not the first time that ESA has used an Antonov, a fantastic plane indeed, to transport satellites to their launch site. Loading the plane was just a routine operation. The train transport between Archangel and Plesetsk was also uneventful, thanks to the wide experience gained by Eurockot and Khrunichev during previous campaigns. For sure, I consider this transportation step as a very good start towards a successful launch campaign.”

CryoSat is the first in the series of Earth Explorer missions to be launched. Earth Explorers are small, inexpensive missions designed to provide some fast answers to a specific aspect of the Earth’s environment. In this case, CryoSat is to determine rates of change in the thickness of marine and continental ice cover.

With speed and a limited budget in mind, the CryoSat project have found an elegant solution for launch, that being a Russian Rockot vehicle, which is actually a converted SS-19 ballistic missile launcher with an additional Breeze-KM upper stage. CryoSat will be the first ESA mission launched on Rockot followed by the Earth Explorers GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) in 2006 and SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) in 2007.

Now that CryoSat has arrived, unloading and unpacking is underway and the launch campaign will begin. Members of the CryoSat team in Plesetsk will oversee the thorough final testing period before the satellite is eventually jointed to the fairing and prepared for launch on 8 October.

Original press release: CryoSat Arrives Safely at Launch Site in Russia (ESA)

The intense mechanical testing period is finally over for the CryoSat satellite, and with launch just a couple of months away - the very last checks are being made before the spacecraft is packed up and shipped to the launch site in Plesetsk, Russia.

During the last 12 months the satellite has been undergoing stringent mechanical and environmental tests at the Space Test Centre at IABG (Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH) in Ottobrunn, Germany. Unfortunately, some concerns were raised about how a few of the components were functioning and consequently, repair and replacement activities hampered the testing programme and slightly delayed the launch date. Now, however, there just remains the final software checks before the satellite and its support equipment are packaged for the long voyage to Russia for launch at the end of September.

The last phase of the testing programme focused on rigorous acoustic tests, which subjected the satellite to the same levels of noise that it will be exposed to during launch. CryoSat will be launched on a Rockot launch vehicle from the remote Plesetsk Cosmodrome about 800 km north of Moscow in Russia. Rockot is one of the modified Russian Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) SS-19 launchers, which were decommissioned as a result of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991. The adaptation of the SS-19 uses the original two lower liquid propellant stages of the ICBM in conjunction with a new ‘Breeze-KM’ third stage for commercial payloads.

A few weeks before the acoustic tests were carried out CryoSat underwent thermal balance and vacuum testing. This part of the programme ensured that the satellite will function properly in the harsh environment that space presents. The spacecraft was oriented in various positions in the ‘Sun chamber’ to simulate, as accurately as possible, the various degrees of heat that the spacecraft will encounter during its unusual polar-orbiting lifetime.

Now that the crucial testing period is over the CryoSat team is preparing for the launch campaign and the operations planned during the early life of the satellite in orbit.

It has taken just six years for CryoSat to go from a proposal idea to a full satellite mission about to be launched. Dedicated to monitoring precise changes in the thickness of the polar ice sheets and floating sea ice, CryoSat is the first Earth Explorer mission to be realised as part of ESA’s Living Planet Programme. The observations made over the three-year lifetime of the mission will provide conclusive evidence of rates at which ice cover may be diminishing as a result of global warming.

Original press release: CryoSat environmental testing over - preparations for shipment to launch site about to begin (ESA)