2023年6月22日

TechnoHoop發射器的軌道飛船進入軌道後經曆了異常,可能會導致過早結束客戶的任務,包括海星空間的水獺小狗示範任務。發射器和其客戶海星空間周三發布了一份聯合聲明中詳細描述發生在數小時後軌道飛船升空的SpaceX Transporter-8本月早些時候的使命。雖然飛船成功與運載火箭分離,它經曆了一個與軟件相關的問題,引起高旋轉速度。這個問題,除了極低燃料和電池的水平,迫使發射器的“緊急決定”部署客戶有效載荷比預期的早。由於早期的部署,海星的水獺小狗演示衛星也開始經曆高旋轉。而海星證實,其衛星還活著,水獺的使命——小狗會嚐試用飛行器交會對接,將無法繼續,直到衛星在軌道上穩定下來。“考慮到事件經驗豐富的衛星發射後的當前狀態,不太可能水獺小狗能夠繼續它的使命,“海星在一份聲明中說。“然而,我們將繼續努力拯救水獺的小狗,我們感激的繼續支持我們的合作夥伴。“海星奧斯汀鏈接告訴TechCrunch創始人之一,作為第一步,該公司將嚐試減少航天器的自轉速度基本上使用機載扭矩棒——電磁鐵推動了地球磁場影響姿態控製和翻滾。從那時起,該公司將需要運行一係列付款處,以確保所有車輛的組件仍正常工作。 “Are things still working on the spacecraft or are they just broken at this point, because we’re really well outside of the bounds of what various pieces of hardware are designed or expected to see on orbit,” he said. He added that the Otter Pup is currently spinning at a rate of one full rotation per second, while spacecraft are generally designed to handle a spin rate of just one or two degrees per second. “We’re a couple orders of magnitude outside of the normal operation bounds,” he said. For its part, Launcher says it eventually lost contact with Orbiter due to “non-optimal solar array pointing,” but that it will continue to try to re-establish contact in case the spacecraft is able to charge its batteries again. Launcher said that it had already identified the likely root cause. In addition to Starfish Space’s Otter Pup demo satellite, Orbiter was also carrying several other customer payloads, including cubesats from Innova Space and TRL11, a space startup developing video for in-space applications. Although Launcher’s Orbiter mission was named SN3, it is actually only the second time the Orbiter Launcher has actually launched. The first mission, called SN1, took place at the beginning of January and also ended in failure due to an issue with the spacecraft’s power systems. Launcher is planning on sending up its third Orbiter mission in February 2024, followed by two more flights that year. Launcher was acquired by Vast, a space station company founded by Jed McCaleb, in February of this year for an undisclosed amount. TechCrunch has reached out to Launcher for additional comment and will update the story if they respond. The story has been updated to include Starfish’s comments and to reflect that torque rods push off the Earth’s magnetic field. Source link