It may now be lying beneath the very same frigid ocean it was meant to survey, but CryoSat 鈥� a European Space Agency probe designed to measure the effects of climate change on Arctic ice 鈥� will almost certainly fly again, albeit in duplicate.
A failure in CryoSat鈥檚 launcher, a converted Russian intercontinental ballistic missile, sent the probe plunging into the Arctic Ocean between Greenland and the North Pole last Saturday. Explosive bolts that should have detached the second rocket stage failed to detonate, says Peter Freeborn, spokesman for Eurockot, a German-Russian venture that converts Soviet-era SS19 ICBMs into 鈥淩ockot鈥� space launchers. Before this crash, Rockots had successfully launched five commercial spacecraft, Freeborn says.
After the crash, Jean-Jacques Dordain, director-general of ESA, said the importance of the CryoSat mission warrants a relaunch. 鈥淲e will do our best to fly a photocopy, CryoSat 2,鈥� says ESA spokesman Franco Bonacina. The agency will decide in December if it can afford it. Because the designs already exist, a second craft should cost less than the original 卢136 million, he says.
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Meanwhile, the Russian Space Agency is investigating the failure, and its findings will determine whether ESA presses ahead with further planned Rockot launches: GOCE, an Earth gravity field mapper scheduled for 2006, and the soil moisture ocean salinity (SMOS) mission for 2007.
