[AR] Re: Restart-able solid rocket motors for cubesats
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 13:34:35 -0400 (EDT)
On Tue, 28 Apr 2020, Chris Jones wrote:
The CONTOUR mission was destroyed shortly after its solid motor escape
engine failed in 2002.
There's some dispute about that one. There was unfortunately no telemetry
during the escape burn -- which happened low over a very remote part of
Earth, on a low-budget mission that couldn't afford luxuries like tracking
aircraft -- and *something* violent happened late in the burn. (Optical
searches found several fragments on nearly the intended trajectory.)
The spacecraft builders said the solid exploded. The investigation board
thought the likeliest failure mode was that the spacecraft came apart due
to structural overheating -- the solid was recessed inside the body, and
small solids often get *hot* during their burns, and there's some doubt
about how well the spacecraft design allowed for this.
Henry
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