Two Space Vehicles To Be Launched From Submarine

Two space vehicles will be launced from a russian submarine in the Barents Sea soon. They will be launched with a Volna carrier rocket. The two vehicles are Cosmos 1 and Demonstrator-2R. Cosmos 1 will be the world’s first solar sail spacecraft if all goes well.

Space.com: Cosmos 1 Solar Sail Spacecraft Heads to Loading Site

A private team of space-savvy civilians has hit a major milestone in plans to launch the first spacecraft propelled by sunlight after shipping the small probe to be loaded atop ballistic missile.

The solar sail-propelled Cosmos 1 vehicle, hailed as the world’s first solar sail spacecraft, has left its Moscow testing center and now bound to Severomorsk, Russia, where it will be loaded into a modified intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and readied for a June 21 launch, mission planners announced Monday.

Cosmos 1 is set to fly atop a Volna rocket and launch from a Russian submarine submerged beneath the Barents Sea. If all goes well, the spacecraft will unfurl its solar sails in Earth orbit and demonstrate the first, controlled use of solar sail propulsion.

“Reaching this milestone puts us on the doorstep to space,” said Louis Friedman, Cosmos 1 project director and executive director of The Planetary Society, a space advocacy group that organized the upcoming space shot. “We are proud of our new spacecraft and hope that Cosmos 1 blazes a new path into the solar system, opening the way to eventual journeys to the stars.”




A rocket aboard a Russian submarine will hurl the solar sail craft high above Earth. Click to enlarge.

RIA Novosti - TWO SPACE VEHICLES TO BE LAUNCHED FROM SUB

May 27 2005

Two space vehicles have been delivered to Severomorsk, the North fleet's base on the Kola peninsula, for being launched with the Volna carrier rocket from board a submarine.

"These are a vehicle with the solar sail Cosmos 1 and pneumatic breaks Demonstrator-2R," a spokesman for the Lavochkin design bureau reports.

The Demonstrator-2R vehicle has been manufactured by order from the European Space Agency and the German company EADS ST. The launch is scheduled for July 5-8, 2005.

June 21st or July 5-8th...? Soon they will be launched and it will be interesting to see if all goes well with this project. If you should happen to see an intercontinental ballistic missile flying by you on June 21st. then it might not be this one since they might not launch this until July 5-8th...

Related Links and Resources:
Space.com: Planetary Society’s Cosmos 1 Solar Sail Ready for Flight
Space.com: Riding the Sun: Maiden Flight Looms for Solar Sail Satellite
MSNBC News: Solar sail launch set for June solstice
Spacedaily: Cosmos 1 Ships In Preparation For June Launch
SpaceRef: Cosmos 1 Ships in Preparation for June Launch - First Solar Sail Spacecraft Ready for Daring Flight
CarlSagan.com

[edit on 2005/5/27 by Hellmutt]

Why in the name of heaven would the Russians want to add the tremendous complexity of an underwater launch to what's going to be a difficult enough new launch mission anyway?

And why would they want to launch from the Barent's sea where, due to the near polar location, they'd have to takc on almost a thousand jiles per hour to the same speed they'd need if they launched from the equator?

That sounds completely crazy.

Interestingly enough, my company has partnered with the Russians (and the Norwegians and Ukranians) for our Sea Launch initiative which involves launching satellites from the seq (surface, not underwater) at the eauqtor to take advantage of the lower impulse orbital velocity requirement.


www.sea-launch.com...

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
Why in the name of heaven would the Russians want to add the tremendous complexity of an underwater launch to what's going to be a difficult enough new launch mission anyway?

And why would they want to launch from the Barent's sea where, due to the near polar location, they'd have to take on almost a thousand jiles per hour to the same speed they'd need if they launched from the equator?

That sounds completely crazy.

Good questions. This is very strange indeed.
Makes me wonder if there is something fishy going on...

[edit on 2005/5/28 by Hellmutt]

I think it's pretty neat they found a use for old ICBMs. If they can use them for commercial satellite launches it would be an incentive for reducing the stockpiles of these things.

: Originally posted by Off_The_Street
Why in the name of heaven would the Russians want to add the tremendous complexity of an underwater launch to what's going to be a difficult enough new launch mission anyway?

And why would they want to launch from the Barent's sea where, due to the near polar location, they'd have to take on almost a thousand jiles per hour to the same speed they'd need if they launched from the equator?

That sounds completely crazy.

That's the conditions ICBMs have to operate in normally, quite an eye-opener when you think about how much paraphenalia and support goes into a simple satellite launch by a space agency - the military can do basically the same thing on a moment's notice.

I realize there's a lot more to getting a satellite into a stable orbit, but they can at least shlep a payload into space with just a button push. Pretty damn cool I think.

They are also testing the systems and reliability of thier sub launch missles for military purposes.

I think this is great,a little competition could never hurt the US space program.Its also a really cool idea with what it seems to have good potential for further space travel.Can't wait to hear how it goes

To bad it is just a short turm mission though, in just a little over a month the Mylar sails will begin to degrade due to the harsh sunlight.

Timeline of mission
www.planetary.org...

The US needs to have a fishing Trawler gathering data ( I meant to say fishing in these waters). A missle launch off a boomer! Might be quite interesting to compare to what Jane's digest and others have to say on the subject.

No matter about easing tensions, the US and Russia still have a terrific amount of fire power capability under the surface of the oceans.

They will launch Cosmos 1 today at 19:46 GMT.

[email protected]: Solar sail set to launch

The revolutionary spacecraft Cosmos 1 is due to launch from a Russian submarine on Tuesday 21 June.

The submarine launch from the Barents Sea, planned for 19:46 GMT, should dispatch Cosmos 1 aboard a converted Volna intercontinental ballistic missile.

Related News Sources:
BBC: Solar sail gets ready for launch

This is the place to follow the mission:

The Planetary Society


Cosmos 1 should be on its way now...

Latest Weblog (Mission events as they happen!)

Latest updates (16 minutes after launch) :

Latest Weblog


Jun 21, 2005 | 13:02 PDT | 20:02 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 16 min

The kick motor should be firing

Again, we still don't know, this is just according to the nominal timeline.

From Moscow: nothing to report yet, everybody is still waiting. We have nominally reached orbit injection time, but we've got no confirmation of that yet.

Jun 21, 2005 | 12:56 PDT | 19:56 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 10 min

No celebration yet...

While it was exciting to hear that the launch happened, we at POP didn't celebrate yet. We are waiting for the first signal to be detected. That's what will tell us that everything is OK. That won't happen for several minutes.

Jun 21, 2005 | 12:54 PDT | 19:54 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 8 min

Stuff we can't see...

There is a lot of stuff going on with the rocket right now that we can't see. By now, the fairing should have separated, and the spacecraft should be starting to spin up in order to achieve a precise orbit insertion burn.

Jun 21, 2005 | 12:48 PDT | 19:48 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 2 min

Normal first stage separation! WE'RE OFF!

This information is being relayed from Severomorsk to Lavochkin. No official launch time yet, we'll get that in a few minutes.

Jun 21, 2005 | 12:46 PDT | 19:46 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 0 min

"This is Pasadena, we have nominal launch, unverified."

According to our clocks, launch just happened. We won't know if that's true for several minutes. Brent is continuing to read off the timeline, which you can read for yourself here.

From Russia: they say we are awaiting message from Severomorsk.

Severomorsk is the Russian Navy port from which the sub carrying Cosmos 1 sailed.

Jun 21, 2005 | 12:41 PDT | 19:41 UTC
Launch minus 0 hours 5 min

"T minus 5."

Five minutes to launch. We are now requesting that everyone on the telecon stay quiet unless exchanging information.

hmm is there something wrong:

"Report from Kamchatka is that they did not detect the spacecraft"

I hope not...

No pictures of the launch in bbc world or euronews so far. strange

Ok, it launched news.bbc.co.uk...

Yeah, its already in space, but there are/were some problems with the seperation of the space vehicle. It was launched from a russian sub, so there were no live feeds available.
The planetary society website seems to be down at the moment, so there aren't any updates available

Problems?

Latest Weblog

Jun 21, 2005 | 13:21 PDT | 20:21 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 35 min

Still nothing at Majuro

Jun 21, 2005 | 13:18 PDT | 20:18 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 32 min

Little bit of signal at Petropavlovsk

Slava Linkin says Doppler signal was received at beginning, then was lost. That might be connected with the fact that the motor burn was happening at this point.

Jun 21, 2005 | 13:15 PDT | 20:15 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 31 min

Majuro does not see signal yet

Jun 21, 2005 | 13:11 PDT | 20:11 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 25 min

Report from Kamchatka is that they did not detect the spacecraft

This isn't necessarily unexpected. Petropavlovsk was a marginal contact, and it would have been happening while the spacecraft was spinning rapidly and thrusting, not an easy signal to deal with.

We are holding our breaths for the Majuro contact.

Hmm...

Jun 21, 2005 | 13:32 PDT | 20:32 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 46 min

Majuro did not receive signal.

Again, this was not wholly unexpected. We have to wait now for the next ground station contact, which is Panska Ves at 21:21:00 UT, about an hour from now.

another update:

Jun 21, 2005 | 13:42 PDT | 20:42 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 56 min

More info from Kamchatka

Lou reports that the Doppler data from Kamchatka indicates that duration of the motor firing was approximately just at that which was programmed. But no conclusion yet, because we have no direct telemetry signal from spacecraft.

Jun 21, 2005 | 13:39 PDT | 20:39 UTC
Launch plus 0 hours 53 min

More info from Kamchatka

An update from Moscow: they have analyzed the Petropavlovsk data and all indications are that the spacecraft was running its program as expected, at least at the beginning of the Kamchatka contact. He reminds us that we did not necessarily expect to recieve telemetry signal at either Petropavlovsk or Majuro.

Update:
Jun 21, 2005 | 14:01 PDT | 21:01 UTC
Launch plus 1 hours 17 min

This from Lou in Moscow:

Here's what we know and don't know. Indications are that orbit burn was received over Kamchatka. That data cuts off. This could be normal, related to the rocket firing; or it could indicate an anomaly. This is unknown. We also know that no signal was received at Kamchatka, and we also know that no signal was recieved at Majuro. From here on in, there's no communication at all wth the spacecraft until it goes over Panska Ves in the Czech Republic. A contingency plan for this is now being put into effect. The Panska Ves, Tarusa, and Bear Lakes stations will send commands to the spacecraft to try to turn it on. So in sum we have some precious data and a lot of silence. We have to wait at least 30 minutes before any possible contact, and possibly longer. It looks like it may be a long night here in Moscow and a long day in Pasadena.

Update:

"Jun 21, 2005 | 14:28 PDT | 21:28 UTC
Launch plus 1 hours 42 min

No news yet

Sorry everybody, I wish I had more info to share with you. We are just waiting and waiting here. The spacecraft should be near Panska Ves and Bear Lakes right now. But even those contacts aren't the best. The best opportunities are on the 5th and 6th orbits, several hours into the mission. I'll tell you more as soon as I have anything to say."

"Jun 21, 2005 | 15:06 PDT | 22:06 UTC
Launch plus 2 hours 20 min

A press conference now, information should be forthcoming.

There is some telemetry data from the launch phase that doesn't appear quite right. At the same point, there is this apparent indication of an orbit insertion motor firing at about the right time. But nothing happened after that, except that the data went noisy, and we don't know.

Jim is reporting now that he's been talking to Strategic Command, which has been tracking the spacecraft for us. They attempted to track it over both Shemya and Kwajunlon (sp?) and they have not seen anything at either station yet. And that's pretty much all we know at this point.

"We've heard nothing and we know nothing," Lou says.

Bruce Murray: "Negative news is not good news. On the other hand we do not have direct evidence for failure. This is not what we'd hoped to have happen."

Annie Druyan: "I may know now why this mission was so affordable." [That was a joke, but a dark one, given how little we know at this point.] "The way to the stars is hard. Ad astra, per aspera -- to the stars, through hard work."

Jun 21, 2005 | 14:47 PDT | 21:47 UTC
Launch plus 2 hours 1 min

No news yet, 2

It's hard to know what to update when there's no information. But I know there are a lot of people out there who want to know what's going on. Please, just be patient. We knew that this was a possibility from the start, though of course we had hoped that we would have those contacts."

edit: the data was edited on the weblog page. I´ve updated with the most recent data (text).

[edit on 2005/6/21 by Hellmutt]