Author Topic: Yantar spacecraft debris identified  (Read 21206 times)

Offline Danderman

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #20 on: 08/27/2012 02:36 pm »
All this discussion of Orlets spysats is wonderful, but were any of them launched in 1993-94, which would be necessary for a 17F112 type spacecraft with a 17D62 engine to end up in Mexico in late 1994, early 1995?

Offline B. Hendrickx

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #21 on: 08/27/2012 03:48 pm »
All this discussion of Orlets spysats is wonderful, but were any of them launched in 1993-94, which would be necessary for a 17F112 type spacecraft with a 17D62 engine to end up in Mexico in late 1994, early 1995?


See my earlier post : according to Isayev bureau veteran Vladimir Zavyalov 17D62 was designed for satellites of the Central Specialized Design Burean (TsSKB) launched by the Zenit rocket. Only two were ever launched : Kosmos-2290 in August 1994 and Kosmos-2372 in September 2000 (both Orlets-2 satellites), so the fragment should be from Kosmos-2290.

I also pointed out two problems with that :
1) Kosmos-2290 was deorbited on 4 April 1995 and the debris was reportedly found earlier than that (although there seems to some uncertainty about the exact date)

2) Kosmos-2290 re-entered over the South Pacific, so how could any debris from the satellite have ended up in Mexico? To be more exact, a press report issued by the Military Space Forces at the time said that it came down in the Pacific 2720 km east of Wellington, New Zealand :
http://epizodsspace.no-ip.org/bibl/nk/1995/7/7-1995-2.html
   

Offline Danderman

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #22 on: 08/28/2012 04:16 pm »
Now I am totally confused as to what spacecraft landed in Copala.

I did find this on a Mexican web site:

http://info7.mx/a/noticia/166561

"No es la primera vez que piezas espaciales caen en suelo mexicano. En diciembre de 1994 una pieza de la nave Cosmos 2267 cayó en el municipio de Cosalá, en el estado de Sinaloa, y logró ser recuperado por especialistas mexicanos. Y en este nuevo caso, todo indica que se trató solo de eso, de una pieza de la nave espacial cayendo a la tierra.'

This indicates that the debris fell in December 1994, but it is not clear whether this is from a primary source, or from analysis many years later.

« Last Edit: 08/28/2012 04:25 pm by Danderman »

Offline Stan Black

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #23 on: 08/28/2012 05:57 pm »
 The 17Д62 is an integrated propulsion system with 1,800 kg of propellant; once considered for use with Dnepr. Is that too big for a Neman?

Offline Danderman

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #24 on: 08/28/2012 07:39 pm »
 The 17Д62 is an integrated propulsion system with 1,800 kg of propellant; once considered for use with Dnepr. Is that too big for a Neman?

What is confusing is that the Mexican reports say the spacecraft debris landed in December 1994, before any Zenit-launched spysat was in orbit. So, why would a Yantar spacecraft use such a large propulsion system as the 17Д62?

Offline B. Hendrickx

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #25 on: 08/28/2012 11:14 pm »
 The 17Д62 is an integrated propulsion system with 1,800 kg of propellant; once considered for use with Dnepr. Is that too big for a Neman?

What is the source for the information that the 17D62 was considered for use with Dnepr?

My understanding is that the Neman propulsion system is virtually identical to that of Resurs-DK (basically a civilian version of Neman). Resurs-DK had a propellant mass of 900 kg, half that of the 17D62.

Offline Stan Black

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #26 on: 08/29/2012 09:03 pm »
The 17Д62 is an integrated propulsion system with 1,800 kg of propellant; once considered for use with Dnepr. Is that too big for a Neman?

What is the source for the information that the 17D62 was considered for use with Dnepr?

My understanding is that the Neman propulsion system is virtually identical to that of Resurs-DK (basically a civilian version of Neman). Resurs-DK had a propellant mass of 900 kg, half that of the 17D62.

http://www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8343&start=45

Offline Danderman

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #27 on: 08/29/2012 09:19 pm »
The 17Д62 is an integrated propulsion system with 1,800 kg of propellant; once considered for use with Dnepr. Is that too big for a Neman?

What is the source for the information that the 17D62 was considered for use with Dnepr?

My understanding is that the Neman propulsion system is virtually identical to that of Resurs-DK (basically a civilian version of Neman). Resurs-DK had a propellant mass of 900 kg, half that of the 17D62.

http://www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8343&start=45

Yep, this is the Energia proposal for a Dnepr upper stage, based on an assortment of subsystems from other spacecraft. For example, the 1800 kg prop tanks came from the Progress M1 midsection. The 17D62 is said to come from the "Argon" spacecraft, which was a project at the time.

However, per this link, Energia provided some specifics on the engine, which had 600 kg thrust.

What we need is some sort of flight history of the engine, to see if it actually flew in space in 1994-95.

Offline B. Hendrickx

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #28 on: 08/30/2012 08:35 pm »
I’ve contacted Vladimir Zavyalov, the veteran of the Isayev design bureau that I’ve mentioned in my earlier posts. He tells me that the 17D62 was only flown on the Zenit-launched Orlets-2 and the Proton-launched Araks/Arkon, the big spysat built by NPO Lavochkin. He says there were plans to use the 17D62 on Soyuz-launched spacecraft, but these never materialized.

This means that the 17D62 flew only four times :

Kosmos-2290 (Orlets-2) (26 August 1994)
Kosmos-2344 (Arkon) (6 June 1997)
Kosmos-2372 (Orlets-2) (25 September 2000)
Kosmos-2392 (Arkon) (25 July 2002)

So this still leaves Kosmos-2290 as the only candidate for the debris found in Mexico. That would imply that the fragment was found not in December 1994 (as all sources seem to claim), but sometime after 4 April 1995 (when Kosmos-2290 was deorbited). It also means that the Military Space Forces press release about Kosmos-2290 having come down 2720 km east of Wellington, New Zealand must have been wrong.

Zavyalov has taken a look at the pictures of the recovered fragment and thinks it is from “the nozzle section of the main engine’s combustion chamber”. 

Offline jcm

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #29 on: 07/21/2013 03:31 am »
Let's dredge this one up again, I took another look.

The claimed impact point E of NZ would be around 154W 37S (plus or minus
some along track slop).  The claimed impact time is 2158 DMV (1858 UTC),
but this is inconsistent with the ground track; if they meant Moscow
summer time (1758 UTC) it makes sens, consistent with a deorbit burn
over the Russian Far East at around 1726 UTC  with entry indeed around 1800 UTC; the only
problem is that the satellite was in an unusually elliptical orbit  so the deorbit
burn would have needed a bit more oomph than usual - maybe there was a
bit of an underburn with a final perigee around 130-150 km, and the
Russians thought it had indeed entered on schedule. Such an orbit passes
over Cosala, Mexico 8 hours (5 orbits) later - I speculate that the
spacecraft partially disintegrated over its Pacific perigee but that
some parts survived the perigee pass and remained in orbit until the
next day without being tracked by either Russian or NORAD.


Let me also note that 4 debris objects were ejected from Kosmos-2290 on
around Apr 1-2, two days before the deorbit; they decayed after a few
weeks in orbit. For other Russian imaging satellites, debris like this
usually comes at the time of deorbit - maybe there was an earlier
deorbit attempt that got scrubbed? However, we don't know very much
about the Orlets-2 so I don't really know what these objects would be -
plausibly they are a failed small-capsule recovery.


Finally, the references to the Mexico debris being found in Dec 1994
don't worry me - those references all seem to mention the incorrect
identification with Kosmos-2267, so I'm sure they just looked up the
reentry date of that satellite and assumed that was when the debris came
down.


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Jonathan McDowell
http://planet4589.org

Offline Stan Black

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #30 on: 07/22/2013 01:55 pm »
Jonathan,

Good bit of analysis!

Is it correct that they exploded, deliberately destroyed at the end of their life?

Stan

Offline jcm

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #31 on: 07/22/2013 03:13 pm »
Some of the Don satellites were destroyed at end of life, not all. I think the Orlets-2 vehicles were deorbited.
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Jonathan McDowell
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Offline Skyrocket

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #32 on: 07/22/2013 03:19 pm »
I think, i remember, that the Orlets-2 were also destroyed. But i do not remember, where i got this info from.

Offline Stan Black

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #33 on: 07/22/2013 04:04 pm »
« Last Edit: 07/22/2013 04:05 pm by Stan Black »

Offline Danderman

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Re: Yantar spacecraft debris identified
« Reply #34 on: 07/22/2013 04:53 pm »
I’ve contacted Vladimir Zavyalov, the veteran of the Isayev design bureau that I’ve mentioned in my earlier posts. He tells me that the 17D62 was only flown on the Zenit-launched Orlets-2 and the Proton-launched Araks/Arkon, the big spysat built by NPO Lavochkin. He says there were plans to use the 17D62 on Soyuz-launched spacecraft, but these never materialized.

This means that the 17D62 flew only four times :

Kosmos-2290 (Orlets-2) (26 August 1994)
Kosmos-2344 (Arkon) (6 June 1997)
Kosmos-2372 (Orlets-2) (25 September 2000)
Kosmos-2392 (Arkon) (25 July 2002)

So this still leaves Kosmos-2290 as the only candidate for the debris found in Mexico. That would imply that the fragment was found not in December 1994 (as all sources seem to claim), but sometime after 4 April 1995 (when Kosmos-2290 was deorbited). It also means that the Military Space Forces press release about Kosmos-2290 having come down 2720 km east of Wellington, New Zealand must have been wrong.

Zavyalov has taken a look at the pictures of the recovered fragment and thinks it is from “the nozzle section of the main engine’s combustion chamber”. 


For context, I am attaching an image of the serial number of the debris exhibited in Culiacan.

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