Imperial College Space and Atmospheric Physics

News Page



 July 2000 Extra

This month's earlier stories:

Stratospheric Water Vapour
Visit to Baikonur
GERB-2 Calibration Complete


Latest news.......

Launch picturesFirst Two Cluster Spacecraft Launched

After many years of effort and ups as well as downs, two of the four Cluster spacecraft were successfully launched on Sunday, 16 July, on board of the Soyuz-Fregat launcher from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. By the end of 21 July, the two spacecraft reached their operational orbit, there to await the arrival of the second pair, due to be launched on 9 August. The performance of the Russian launcher was, as they say in the business, "nominal" or in plain English, brilliant !

The day of the launch found Chris Carr, the FGM (magnetometer) Technical Manager, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, watching the distant launch pad through binoculars. André Balogh, the Principal Investigator, together with Sue Balogh, Trevor Beek, Julian Harris, Patrick Brown and Tim Oddy were at the European Space Control Centre in Darmstadt, Germany where a direct TV link was relaying on a giant screen the nailbiting countdown and the spectacular launch. Others (Elizabeth Lucek, Michele Dougherty and Peter Cargill) watched the launch from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. There were anxious moments as the different important milestones of the launch and early orbit phase sequence came and went, but the most nerve-racking moments were as we all waited for the first direct acquisition of the spacecraft signals by the ground station at Kiruna, Northern Sweden, just over two hours after lift-off. After an unexpectedly long ten-minute delay, both spacecraft responded satisfactorily, and then the long operational procedures could begin, first to test the spacecraft out in orbit, then to initiate the repeated firing of the main engines to bring the spacecraft into their operational orbit.

Our magnetometers will be the first scientific instruments to be switched on and tested in space about ten days after the second launch. The whole magnetometer team at Imperial College and at our collaborating institutions in Europe and in the USA is looking forward to the harvest of scientific results to flow from Cluster. We'll post news of the second launch and of the commissioning of our instrument and then, we hope, we'll really celebrate the beginning of the world-beating mission to the Earth's magnetosphere !

For more details and background, see our web pages (Cluster) or ESA's web page of the mission (ESA Cluster).

Above left: The two Cluster spacecraft under the protective fairing of the Soyuz-Fregat rocket, awaiting the launch. Above right: We have lift-off! Below: The spirit of rejoicing after the launch is successfully captured by Julian Harris' smile, in the company of Katie Hazwell who presented the TV programme of the Cluster launch from the Darmstadt Operations Centre.

André Balogh 24th July 2000


Previous July SPAT News headlines...


View Last month's news, older news or return to Space and Atmospheric Physics home page



Revised 24th July 2000
Maintained by R. J. Forsyth