Accident Details


Loss of Soyuz
Domain: Space
Year: 2017
Data Categories: Dynamic
Properties Lost: Fidelity / Representation, Integrity, Verifiability

Summary:

Loss of Soyuz-2.1b rocket carrying Meteor-M 2-1 weather satellite due to incorrect GPS coordinates at take-off.

Details:

On November 28th, 2017, the second launch took place from russia’s new launch site at Vostochny, carrying the Meteor-M No.2-1 polar-orbiting weather satellite, and 18 small satellites flying as secondary payloads. The launch appeared successful, but several hours later it was announced that it had not been possible to establish communications with the weather satellite, because it was not in its target orbit. An unconfirmed report claimed that the rocket was in the wrong orientation during its initial burn, and crashed into the

On November 28th, 2017, the second launch took place from russia’s new launch site at Vostochny, carrying the Meteor-M No.2-1 polar-orbiting weather satellite, and 18 small satellites flying as secondary payloads. The launch appeared successful, but several hours later it was announced that it had not been possible to establish communications with the weather satellite, because it was not in its target orbit. An unconfirmed report claimed that the rocket was in the wrong orientation during its initial burn, and crashed into the Atlantic ocean. The following January, Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin reported that the 2.6bn-rouble ($45m) satellite was lost because the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle had been programmed to take off from Baikonur, and not from the actual launch site at Vostochny. This is an example of a problem with data in the Adaptation category, which did not map correctly to the real-world entity that it was modelling, and hence lost the Fidelity/Representation property. Other properties that were lost include Integrity and Verifiability.

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