Indian Space News and Discussion

[Arun_S]

On GSLV F06 launch failure some useful reports.

It was control system failure (al indications till now is control hardware problem)



[url="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/article979052.ece"]GSLV loses control, erupts into ball of flame[/url]

T.S. Subramanian



The launch of the Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-F06) from here on Saturday ended in a failure, with the vehicle losing control 47 seconds after its flight, breaking up into pieces and erupting into a ball of flame. As the vehicle veered off the safety corridor and the flaming debris could have fallen on the residential areas around Sriharikota, Range Safety Officer (RSO) V.K. Srivastava pressed the “destruct” button and the explosives around the vehicle ignited and destroyed it.



The destruct command was given 63 seconds after the lift-off.



When the vehicle disintegrated over the Bay of Bengal, it had reached an altitude of eight km and 2.5 km from the Sriharikota coastline. Gloom engulfed the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) engineers as they saw the disaster striking the vehicle.



ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrisnan said at a press conference: “The controllability of the vehicle was lost after 47 seconds because we found that the command to control it did not reach the actuator system in the first stage of the vehicle… We suspect that a connector chord, which takes the signal down, has snapped.”



Director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvanthapuram P.S. Veeraraghavan explained that the command to control the vehicle from the Equipment Bay, the electronic brain of the vehicle resident atop the rocket, did not reach the actuators in the vehicle's first stage. “So it was not basically a design problem but a problem of the connector snapping.”



The GSLV-F06, carrying communication satellite GSAT-5P, had a flawless lift-off at the appointed time of 4.04 p.m. It climbed majestically into the sky as the four strap-on booster motors around the core first stage and the first stage itself ignited on time.



The vehicle performance was normal up to 50 seconds. Soon afterwards, it lost control, went here and there, exploded into a ball of fire, and then it was destroyed. White, reddish orange and dark grey smoke filled the sky even as the flaming debris, like the shooting stars, rained down.



Four GSLV failures



The previous GSLV flight in April 2010 also failed. Out of seven GSLV flights from 2001, four, including the latest, have failed.

[url="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/article979052.ece"]GSLV failure tragic, say scientists[/url]





December 25, 2010 18:55 IST | Updated: December 25, 2010 19:42 IST New Delhi, December 25, 2010

PTI Describing the failure of the GSAT-5P communication satellite launch on Saturday evening as “very tragic”, India’s top space scientists said the launch vehicle going up in flames soon after the lift-off was “a major setback” for ISRO.



Senior space scientist Prof. Yashpal, in his first reaction to the failure of the satellite launch, said, “It is very tragic. I think something has happened in early stages. I have never heard of such a thing, as we have had several successes before.”



Noting that the GSLV-F06 launch vehicle had disintegrated in its initial stages itself, Prof. Yashpal said, “We did not get up to the liquid stage. It is terribly sad that something somewhere has gone amiss. A lot of data is available. So they will be able to find out what went wrong.”



He felt that this was “a freak mishap” as the early stages of the launch vehicle had been tested several times by India and have a 100 per cent success rate.



“It (the problem in the launch vehicle) cannot be something fundamentally wrong. It must be something big. It is unfortunate. This is an accident of some sort,” he said.



Former Indian Space Research Organisation engineer Madan Lal, in his remarks, said there seemed to be “some technical problem” in the first stage of the launch vehicle and not with the Russian cryogenic stage that India was using for the satellite launch this time.



“Cryogenic stage is the third stage of the launch. It (failure) appears not to be linked with the cryogenic stage,” he said.



Mr. Lal said India had time and again succeeded in the early stages of the launch vehicle and that part was not a problem area for ISRO scientists.



Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) research fellow Ajay Lele said it was “a huge setback” for ISRO. But, he said, the scientists would be able to come back and re-launch the satellite soon.



“It was an important mission for ISRO. It is supposed to be one of the heaviest satellites ever tried by ISRO. In the business of satellite launches, failures are a part of the game,” he remarked.

[url="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/article979187.ece"]ISRO’s GSLV mission goes up in smoke[/url]



[url="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/article979234.ece"]GSLV failure tragic, say scientists[/url]



[url="http://www.sify.com/news/split-second-decision-i-feel-very-sad-isro-officer-news-national-kmzwadeggdg.html"]http://www.sify.com/news/split-second-decision-i-feel-very-sad-isro-officer-news-national-kmzwadeggdg.html[/url]