House launch startup Launcher mentioned its first spacecraft, which launched on a SpaceX rocket final month, has failed.
The Launcher Orbiter SN1, the corporate’s first spacecraft, launched on the SpaceX Transporter-6 mission, which took off from Cape Canaveral House Power Station in Florida final month carrying 114 satellites to orbit — the second-most spacecraft ever launched on a single mission. Transporter-6 was SpaceX’s two hundredth flight and deployed all kinds of payloads, together with a Space Force weather cubesat and a prototype solar sail designed by French agency Gama.
At the very least one of many mission’s payloads has now been confirmed to have failed. In a statement (opens in new tab) revealed Thursday (Feb. 16), Launcher mentioned that its Orbiter SN1 spacecraft stopped working as a result of a lack of energy and management. “Sadly, after that point interval, the car stopped working as we weren’t in a position to generate energy from our solar panels as a result of an orientation management situation brought on by a fault in our GPS antenna system,” Launcher mentioned within the assertion.
Associated: Space startup Launcher to fly an orbital platform filled with cubesats on a SpaceX rocket in 2022
Within the assertion outlining the failure, Launcher calls Orbiter SN1 a “excessive delta-v succesful space tug,” with delta-v referring to the craft’s potential to alter trajectory or velocity.
On the corporate’s website (opens in new tab), Launcher writes that Orbiter can “carry out any mixture of maneuvers to switch your orbit and exactly place particular person satellites of their precise places.” This functionality permits Launcher to put satellites into exact orbits not constrained by their specific launch rideshare, enabling their prospects extra flexibility in selecting their satellites’ last orbits.
Following the failure, Launcher said it can redesign its GPS radio and antenna subsystems for future flights to make sure that this situation doesn’t reoccur. The corporate additionally mentioned it has “improved Orbiter’s battery charger to permit charging and restoration in practically all spacecraft anomalous occasions in addition to doubled the battery capability.”
Launcher plans to launch extra missions later this 12 months, on SpaceX’s Transporter-8 mission in June and Transporter-9 in October.
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