Technology from the Spanish company GTD prevents disaster at the Norwegian space base on Andøya
- Fall into a controlled ballistic trajectory
- The struggle to reach outer space from the European continent continues
The Spanish company GTD has developed advanced mission control software specifically for the new Norwegian orbital launch complex at Andøya, right on the Arctic Circle, which has managed to prevent the malfunction of the inaugural flight of the Spectrum microlancer from causing a disaster with serious consequences.
The protagonist of the failure was the German Spectrum rocket, in the first attempt by the company Isar Aerospace to become a leader in outer space transport from continental Europe. But it has ended in resounding failure. Fortunately, there were no fatal consequences thanks to the launch termination computer system created by GTD which prevented the rocket from falling on any of the small urban centres, infrastructures or the military base within a radius of a few dozen kilometres from the take-off point.
GTD's director of space operations, Ricardo Bennassar, with a team of three technicians, followed the launch from the company's headquarters in Barcelona and provided support, if necessary, for any incidents that might arise in Andøya, where operational control was in the hands of Norwegian technicians. The Spanish company has trained the country's specialists in what was the first orbital mission from Andøya and also the first for the Spectrum rocket.
On 30 March, at 12:30 Spanish mainland time, the Spectrum successfully lifted off from its launch pad on the coast of the island of Andøya, some 1,400 kilometres north of Oslo, the capital of Norway. With two stages of propulsion - the first with nine 75-kilonewton Aquila rocket engines and the second with just one, but 95 kilonewton, 28 metres high - the size of an 8/9-storey building - and 2 in diameter, the Spectrum microlancer has been completely destroyed. Although it is designed to transport between 700 and 1,000 kilos of cargo, on this occasion there was no satellite travelling as a guinea pig. portar entre 700 y 1.000 kilos de carga, en esta ocasión no viajaba ningún satélite en calidad de conejillo de indias.
The function of the advanced Andøya launch control system developed by GTD is to supervise, synchronise and optimise critical activities, such as the countdown sequence for the rocket's take-off, monitoring its ascent trajectory, as well as flight safety. Once take-off has been achieved, the flight tracking software is responsible for monitoring the parameters of the launcher's trajectory in real time and providing measurements to enable mission controllers to make quick decisions, with the ultimate aim of avoiding damage to people, ground infrastructure and maritime traffic.
Fall into a controlled ballistic trajectory
The live broadcast of the launch showed that the take-off and the first few moments were apparently correct. However, a few seconds into the ascent flight, the technical problems were already visible and were reflected on the computer screens. The GTD system compiles and integrates optical video images, the telemetry data sent from the launcher to the ground and the information from the radar that follows the trajectory and began to show that the Spectrum was out of control, immersed in a high-risk spiral for safety.
The Norwegian technicians were aware that the mission was not within the predefined parameters and that, if the ascent continued, it could represent a serious danger. Why didn't they press the self-destruct button and drop the rocket to the ground? Ricardo Bennassar explains. Given the characteristics, dimensions and capacities of micro-launchers, ‘they do not have a pyrotechnic self-immolation system unlike, for example, the current large European rockets Ariane 6 or Vega-C’.
Instead, the flight termination system designed by GTD - which has a manual and an automatic option - ‘manages to neutralise the rocket by shutting down the propulsion engines, causing it to descend in a controlled ballistic trajectory,’ Bennassar emphasises. And so it happened. Whether the neutralisation system was in manual or automatic configuration is something that the Commission of Inquiry set up for this purpose will have to verify.
But the fact is that at a height of around one hundred metres above the ground and with the rocket's guidance, navigation and control system trying in vain to position the ascent trajectory within its correct parameters, the flow of liquid oxygen and liquid propane that fed the nine Aquila engines was cut off... ’ and the Spectrum began to plummet towards the ground on a controlled ballistic trajectory,’ explains Ricardo Bennassar, “until it crashed into the cold waters near the launch area. With practically all the fuel in the tanks, ”the explosion was tremendous.’
Before take-off, the executive president and co-founder of Isar, Daniel Metzler, had applied the plaster before the wound and, surprisingly, had anticipated that he had ‘little hope that the Spectrum could reach Earth orbit’. He completed his prediction with the statement that ‘every second of flight will be valuable because it will allow us to collect data and gain experience and, if it is 30 seconds, it will be a real success’.
The struggle to reach outer space from the European continent continues
As the result of the mission has been a fiasco, however much one wants to hide it, Metzler reiterated after the accident that the Spectrum ‘met all our expectations and was a great success. We had a clean take-off, the rocket was in the air for 30 seconds and we were even able to test our flight termination system’. But of those 30 seconds, the rocket spent almost half of them in free fall, describing a ballistic descent trajectory with the engines switched off. Furthermore, there has been no opportunity to verify critical aspects, such as the separation between the first and second stages of propulsion.
In line with Metzler's words, the director general of Norsk Romsenter, that is, the Norwegian Space Agency in the vernacular - NOSA for its acronym in English - physicist Christian Hauglie-Hanssen, has stated that Isar and the Andøya space complex ‘will benefit from the test flight, will come back stronger next time and will become key players in a rapidly evolving market’.
For the man who has been in charge of NOSA since June 2018, the first orbital launch from Norwegian soil and from continental Europe (with the exception of those carried out from Russia) is the first step in a commercial initiative that ‘marks the beginning of an era in which Norway and its European partners will guarantee that Andøya has the best possible conditions to compete in the European market’.
Until its recent setback, Isar was at the forefront of the group of companies striving to develop small commercial space transport vectors, having raised more than 400 million euros in public and private funding and with the help of the German Aerospace Agency (DLR). The Spanish company PLD Space, which is developing the Miura 5 and whose first flight is scheduled for 2026, is competing with the frontrunners, as well as other companies from Germany (RFA and HyImpulse), France (MaiaSpace) and the United Kingdom (Orbex).
All of the above make up the vanguard of emerging companies that aspire to capture the significant international demand that aims to position small satellites in low Earth orbits. It is a growing market, which for several years has been monopolised by the influential American billionaire Elon Musk with his reliable Falcon 9 launcher, but which Brussels and the European Space Agency (ESA) want to compete with.
The new complex that provides access to outer space is located in Nordmela, on the coast of the island of Andøya. It was inaugurated by the Crown Prince of Norway, Haakon Magnus, on 2 November, when construction work was still to be finished, and the government of Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre has named it ‘the first operational spaceport in continental Europe’.