The delayed Minotaur IV
finally launches and its payload plays hide and seek
or... hide and keep hiding
on your Spacevidcast for April 27th, 2010.
Last Thursday, April 22nd at 2300 UTC
an all new rocket from the US Air Force and Orbial Sciences launched:
The Minotaur IV Light.
This new rocket uses U.S. Government furnished solid rocket motors
from decommissioned peacekeeper ICBM's
as well as a commercial solid rocket upper stage.
The rest of the vehicle is based on Orbital's past rockets
such as the smaller Minotaur I and Pegasus.
While this particular launch was sub-orbital,
the Minotaur IV is actually designed to be a orbital launch system.
The Minotaur IV has seen some delays.
it was discovered that and gas generator in It was discovered that a gas generator in the 3rd stage of the rocket would produce
unintended thrust
after the motor burned out.
Engineers had to go back and design a new diffuser to reduce that unintended thrust, which then
delayed the debut of the rocket itself.
Projects such as the Space Based
Space Surveillance Satellite or SBSS
have been delayed since October of last year due to the Minotaur IV issues.
This setback has caused a cascading delay for military satellite deployment.
Some satellites have been moved to other launch vehicles such as the Delta II while others
have had to wait for the Minotaur IV configuration to be fixed.
Now that the Air Force
and Orbital have been able to successfully launch the Minotaur IV,
it is expected that they will be able to catch up on that backlog.
While the launch itself was a success,
the payload,
not so much.
Aboard the Minotaur IV Light was DARPA's Hypersonic test vehicle.
The payload was known as the Falcon HTV-2a Glide Vehicle
and is designed to re-enter the atmosphere and fly across the Pacific Ocean
at speeds of around 13,000 miles per hour, or
20,000 kilometers per hour.
The HTV was supposed to test technologies that could eventually
be employed by a system capable of prompt global response missions.
Which sounds foreboding.
Well, that was the plan at least.
The vehicle was released from the Minotaur's third stage and it looks like Orbital's rocket did deliver
the HTV glide vehicle
and separate as planned,
but then something went horribly,
tragically wrong.
The craft was supposed to try out its aerodynamic control systems, do a bunch of turns to burn
off some energy
and then glide over the Pacific Ocean at that awesome 13,000 miles per hour
before splashing down in the sea
near the US Army's Regan Test Site.
Unfortunately, Tracking systems lost contact with the Falcon HTV-2a around 9
minutes after liftoff.
DARPA has not yet said if
any of the HTVs mission objectives were completed
before communications with the craft were lost.
Hehe, oops.
And finally,
51 years ago today the Mercury 7 Astronauts first reported for duty.
Project Mercury was the first Human Space Flight program in the United States
running from 1959 to 1963.
The goal of Project Mercury was to put a human in orbit around the Earth. The first
human flight on Mercury was with Alan Shepard on May 5th,
1961 which was a sub-orbital flight,
and on February 20th, 1962
the goal of orbiting the Earth was met with Astronaut
John Glenn.
Don't forget to join us
this Friday at 0200 UTC for Spacevidcast Live.
This week we will have on guest Bill Suitor who is the author of Rocketbet Pilot's Manual.
This is your chance to ask someone who has actually flown a rocketbelt
your own questions.
For those of you in the US the show will be this Thursday at 7:00pm PDT
or 10:00pm EDT.
Remember to pick up your copy of the Rocketbelt Pilot's Manual from Apogeebooks.com
before the show
and we hope to see you there