FYI to everyone: there are several fake “ESA Official” YouTube channels running deepfaked Elon crypto scam streams that claim to be “Ariane 6 Launch Stream”.
They’re nothing new, but sharing in case anyone hasn’t seen it before. Those aren’t real streams!
It’s fine, both of the last two US Rovers are powered off RTGs and several of the deep space probes run off RTGs also. For low Earth orbit and stuff closer to the sun it doesn’t make sense but going further out and especially in a place like Mars where solar panels are prone to being covered in dust an RTG power source makes sense.
Seems like they might be between ground stations right now. Haven’t seen live video from the upper stage for a few minutes. Telemetry still looks good though.
It might have failed to reach orbit, but it still lifted off successfully and didn’t destroy the pad on the way back down. I’d say that’s pretty successful for the first flight of a new launch vehicle.
The tech-demo phase of Ariane 6 is still in progress but has shown an unexpected result which will only affect the end of the mission.
On the webcast, they stated that the Auxiliary Propulsion Unit (APU) switched off shortly after it it powered up after SECO-2. Without the APU, they have no way to settle the propellants in the tanks, and thus can’t reignite the upper stage for the final burn.
From the live camera feed, it looks as though the upper stage was spinning, so there may have been some loss of control as well.
So Gaia relies on maintaining very accurate pointing at the stars while measuring their position. For this purpose it uses special cold gas (Nitrogen) thrusters with very low flow noise. These cold gas tanks are now empty and Gaia simply cannot continue to operate.
Arianespace hasn’t publicly disclosed the cost for an Ariane 6 launch, although it’s likely somewhere in the range of 80 million to 100 million euros, about 40 percent lower than the cost of an Ariane 5. This is about 50 percent more than SpaceX’s list price for a dedicated Falcon 9 launch.
With more launch, the price per rocket should decrease, but making it cost competitive will be an important mission if EU wants to launch hundreds of satellites in the future.
With more launch, the price per rocket should decrease
Should it? Are you referring to amortizing the costs of development, or optimizing the production cost of each rocket? No portion of Ariane 6 is reusable, so it’s not like they can get more launches out of each rocket…
Are you referring to amortizing the costs of development
Yes, I was thinking more amortizing the costs of development which will definitely get cheaper the more launch happening, but I guess it’s also possible for optimization of production, although I’m not expecting much from that.
“We are obviously not surprised by these results… it would have been extremely concerning to find out that Earth was not habitable! But they indicate that MAJIS and SWI will work very successfully at Jupiter, where they will help us investigate whether the icy moons could be potential habitats for past or present life.”
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