> "Liftoff of the tenth Ariane 5 occurred right on schedule at 2158 > GMT (5:58 > p.m. EDT) from the jungle launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, > beginning a > 34-minute flight that was supposed to propel its dual-satellite > cargo into > an elliptical transfer orbit around Earth. The intended orbit > featured a > high point of 35,853 km, low point of 858 km and inclination of 2.0 > degrees > to either side of the equator. > > But a "defect" in the rocket's upper stage relegated the cargo to an > orbit > with a high point of only 17,528 km, a low point of 592 km and > inclination > of 2.9 degrees to the equator." Spaceflightnow.com is reporting that it is unsure whether or not the spacecraft has enough fuel to reach the intended orbit. Questions: 1) Will they try to get it into the correct orbit, even if they may not have enough fuel to do so (if it's an unknown) ? That could be kind of risky, since if they run out of fuel before getting into the right orbit, it will eventually dip into low Earth orbit and cause risk to other satellites. 2) If there is insufficient fuel, would they plummet the spacecraft into Earth's atmosphere? Or settle for a lower orbit which would take the satellite all around the Earth? ------------------------------ Jonathan T. Wojack tlj18@juno.com 39.706d N 75.683d W 4 hours behind UT (-4) ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jul 13 2001 - 18:07:28 PDT