YES2 space experiment by students turns into a MAYBE

William Atkins
Thursday, 27 September 2007 22:34

Science - Space

The Young Engineers Satellite 2 (YES2) involves a tether that was supposed to extend out about 20 miles (33 kilometers) with a probe on its end. The tether failed to unwind fully, however, the probe is on its way for an Earth landing.         

The experiment was conducted by nearly 500 engineering students from Australia, Europe, Japan, and North America. It was launched on September 14, 2007, on a Russian Foton-M3 spacecraft. The tether, composed of the very strong fiber material called Dyneema, was designed to extend out with a 11-pound spherical capsule called Fotino on its end.

The Foton-M3 spacecraft was in an orbit about 190 miles (315 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. As the tether lengthened the Fotino capsule would drop into a lower orbit, about 18 miles (30 kilometers) closer to the Earth, and then be released.

However, the tether only retracted about 5 miles (8.5 kilometers). Unable to extend the tether any further the Fotino probe was released, as initially planned, so that it will descend into the Earth’s atmosphere for a parachute landing. Its original landing site was in Kazakhstan. Ground controllers are re-calculating the trajectory of Fotino as its orbit deteriorates from the gravitational pull of the Earth. They hope to be able to predict where it will land.

According to a comment made on the YES2 website (http://www.yes2.info/), “Later, during the second stage, the tether slowed down. As the tether deployed slower than planned, it reached a length of 8.5 km before the preprogrammed command released Fotino loose from MASS and cut the tether. We are currently assessing the orbit of Fotino to understand when and where the capsule will return to Earth on its parachute. Despite not having reached the full 30 km deployment, we think that the hard work of the YES2 team has paid off with this largely successful demonstration.”

An earlier iTWire article entitled “Engineering students say Go for tethered YES2 satellite " goes into more details on the objectives of the mission.