Lessons learned from aborted launch

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December 7, 2007

By MIKE JAMES The Daily Independent Fri Dec 07, 2007, 06:21 AM EST

MOREHEAD — A “catastrophic failure” destroyed their payload, but a team of Morehead State University students and faculty are coming home from a rocket launch in New Mexico with valuable data the rocket sent back before it crashed.

The Wednesday launch of the KySat Space Express, for which the MSU team served as the ground communications crew, was by no means a failure, even though the delivery vehicle failed to take the payload to its planned 100-mile suborbital target altitude, said Benjamin Malphrus, director of MSU’s Space Science Center.

Malphrus and two students were among the scientists who gathered at the White Sands Missile Range for the suborbital mission, which was a preliminary flight to test systems that will be sent to space on the KentuckySat satellite project next year.

“This is rocket science. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it,” said Malphrus Thursday during a stopover on his long flight back to Kentucky.

The payload of instruments was lifted by a booster rocket the first mile and then was to have coasted the next 99 miles inside a second, non-powered stage, Malphrus said.

While scientists are still analyzing the launch, Malphrus believes the second-stage system failed, which sent the rocket spinning out of control, destroying everything in it.

That happened seconds after liftoff, but the instruments managed to send back a significant amount of data, he said.

“Which meant the payload worked beautifully. Everything the students did worked beautifully,” Malphrus said.

The second stage may have failed because of the launch stress, he said. To take the payload up to its target altitude, it has to endure 150 times the force of gravity and temperatures up to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Students were disappointed about the crash but learned much from the mission, said Andrew Crowe, a senior computer science major from Danville.

The experience of setting up and testing the equipment was worth the trip, he said. “I’d have been satisfied even if we hadn’t launched.”

The data the instruments sent back was significant in reporting on the condition of the spacecraft, said Prabhakara Rao Eluru, a graduate student on the team. “So the mission is not a failure.”

What the scientists learned will be applied to the orbital satellite, said Kris Kimel, president of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corp., one of the entities in the joint enterprise of colleges, universities, public companies and private organizations in the student-led initiative to design, launch and operate small satellites.

The planned satellite launch is believed to be the first ever undertaken by a state and the satellite is to be used for educational purposes.

During that launch, MSU’s team will serve as the main ground control station, using the space center’s tracking system at the Morehead campus.

The project will include further suborbital launches as well, Kimel said.

“Any time you’re dealing with science and space, it’s a risky enterprise,” he said.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.

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