Another Accidental or Predictable Failure of Zenith?
On March 12, the international Sea Launch Project, to which Ukraine is also a party, suffered a setback. The Ukrainian Zenith 3SL carrier rocket with a payload of a British communications satellite fell into the Pacific soon after launch. Before that, the Ukrainian rocket was twice launched successfully from the sea pad.
Yuri Oleksiyenko, Pivdenne Design Bureau press service chief, who monitored the rocket’s take off in the Dnipropetrovsk control room, told The Day the tragedy had occurred in the 467th second. In his words, ten seconds before the second stage had burnt out, the flight was terminated as an emergency measure. Now, as Mr. Oleksiyenko affirms, our scientists are studying the telemetry in order to find out what caused the accident.
Answering a correspondent’s question if this failure will affect further involvement of Ukrainian rocket builders in Sea Launch, Mr. Oleksiyenko said this is a long-term program. In general, none of the world’s carrier rockets is insured against failures. Also falling quite often are the Russian carriers, Proton in particular, the American Delta and Titan, and the French Ariane. This opinion is also shared by Will Trafton, Sea Launch president, who commented on the failure to AP, “We got a good rocket and a team, but this business is not for the faint of heart. Such accidents do happen, unfortunately.”
“The analysis of countdown information,” says the statement released by Pivdenne Design Bureau public relations office, “showed that the ground-based automatic pre-launch procedure failed to issue a mandatory command to shut the second-level air system valve, which resulted in de-pressurization of this system immediately after the launch.” This caused an almost 60% drop of gas pressure in the system that controls automatic devices. This in turn led to engine irregularities and failure.
“The non-issue of command was most probably caused,” the statement went on, “by a logical error in the automatic pre-launch procedure algorithm made in the process of correction after the second launch” of this carrier rocket under the Sea Launch program. On The Day’s request, Pivdenne spokesman Yuri Oleksiyenko commented on this rather carefully-worded statement, saying that it is not the Ukrainian but the Russian experts from the Energiya Space Missile Complex who were involved in the development and the “correction” of the automatic launch program. By all accounts, the valve shutting command disappeared from the countdown graph after this. As to the work of our experts, there are no complaints about any systems, units, or sub-units they manufactured. The rocket itself requires no reworking and is absolutely fit for further use under the Sea Launch program.
