Tether mishap 'slingshots' capsule into space
NewScientist ^ | 27 September 2007 | Colin Barras

A small space capsule has been lost in Earth orbit after a space tether experiment went awry on Tuesday. The capsule will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and parachute down at an unknown location.


Despite the mishap, the team behind the mission say it shows that space tethers can provide a cheap and safe way to return a payload from an orbiting satellite back to Earth without using costly rocket boosters.


The Young Engineers Satellite 2 (YES2) mission, coordinated by ESA and the Russian Space Agency, was to have unfurled the longest human-made structure in space – a 30-kilometre-long, 0.05 millimetre-thick tether, made of a super-strong polythene fibre called Dyneema. This would have connected a Russian-operated satellite to the beach-ball-sized capsule called Fotino.


In theory, the set-up should have acted as a giant pendulum, providing enough momentum to send Fotino back to Earth. Watch a video animation of the process here. But the mission hit a snag, literally, when the tether failed to unwind at full speed. Instead of deploying to 30 km, it reached only 8.5 km before releasing Fotino.


Unknown landing point "The most precise calculations estimate re-entry sometime between Sunday and Tuesday, but we’re not sure where it will come down," admits Michiel Kruijff, lead engineer on the YES2 mission at Delta-Utec Space Research & Consultancy.


Despite the snag, Kruijff believes the mission shows the concept can work. "The glass is half full," he told New Scientist. "Many of YES2's mission objectives have been achieved," including more than half of the deployment goals.
"This is how our Russian counterparts have seen it," Kruijff adds. "They are extremely satisfied and would like to do more mission testing."


(Excerpt) Read more at space.newscientist.com ...