The first two fully operational satellites of Europe’s Galileo navigation system have been sent to the wrong orbit, delivering more pain for a project already beset by cost overruns and delays.
The potential implications of the failure were still…
The first two fully operational satellites of Europe’s Galileo navigation system have been sent to the wrong orbit, delivering more pain for a project already beset by cost overruns and delays.
The potential implications of the failure were still being investigated as SatelliteFinance went to press.
Paris-based Arianespace, which launched the satellites from French Guiana on 22 August on a Russian Soyuz rocket, blamed an upper stage anomaly in an initial assessment.
It said this caused the spacecraft to be delivered to an elliptical orbit, with eccentricity of 0.23, a semi major axis of 26,200km and inclined at 49.8 degrees, instead of the intended circular orbit, inclined at 55 degrees with a semi major axis of 29,900km.
“Our aim is of course to fully understand this anomaly,” said Arianespace chairman and CEO Stéphane Israël.
“Everybody at Arianespace is totally focused on meeting this objective. Starting Monday [26 August], Arianespace, in association with ESA and the European Commission, will designate an independent inquiry board to determine the exact causes of this anomaly and to draw conclusions and develop corrective actions that will allow us to resume launches of Soyuz from the Guiana Space Center (CSG) in complete safety and as quickly as possible.
“The board will coordinate its work with Russian partners in the Soyuz at CSG programme. Arianespace is determined to help meet the European Union’s goals for the Galileo programme without undue delay. We would like to thank ESA, the European Commission and [French space agency] CNES for the very productive discussions since becoming aware of the occurrence of the anomaly.
“While it is too early to determine the exact causes, we would like to offer our sincere excuses to ESA and the European Commission for this orbital injection that did not meet expectations.”
The multi-billion dollar Galileo project, which was originally intended to be operational by 2007, had been aiming to provide near-global coverage in 2015. Arianespace had also been due to launch another batch of Galileo satellites on another Soyuz in November.
