The Daily Iowan: 1996

UI work destroyed in blast

By: Kevin Ho The Daily Iowan

Seven years of hard work by a team of UI professors went up in flames over French Guiana early Tuesday morning. A European Space Agency (ESA) Ariane-5 rocket, carrying a $6.6 million payload of four identical research satellites that contained instruments designed by professors from the UI physics department, exploded shortly after liftoff.

“Well, obviously I'm disappointed after all the work we put in," said project engineer and UI Professor Don Kirchner. "We have to recognize that in this business this happens.”

Kirchner said the project was contracted by NASA to ESA in 1989 and all project funds came from NASA and ESA. Launch officials said the unmanned rocket was deliberately blown up 40 seconds after takeoff at a height of 13,120 feet because it appeared the rocket was veering off course and might crash to Earth. Principle investigator and UI Professor Donald Gurnett said the goal of the project was to study plasma in the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Well, it was a very important mission, not only for us, but for European scientists, too,” Gurnett said. “The mission was to study what I might refer to as space weather. Specifically the plasma surrounding the Earth — the stuff that causes the Northern Lights and geomagnetic storms.”

Gurnett and Kirchner said there are spare parts for one satellite and they are uncertain of what will happen to the project. “We only have the spare parts for one (satellite),” Gurnett said. “They would have to build four satellites. The project was unique because there were four satellites taking measurements. It's entirely up to the funding agency (NASA) to retry.”

Gurnett said the team of people working on the project was obviously disappointed, but he said successful launches in the past, and the promise of future projects, is keeping the department optimistic.

“I think people are disappointed, but we have had about 25 successful space projects over the past 30 years,” Gurnett said. He said this type of disaster also happened in 1980, when the ESA attempted to launch one of the UI's projects — Project Firewheel — on a similar type of rocket, which also exploded. The European agency has been dogged by disaster due to its hectic schedule since its first launch in 1979. Two U.S. communications satellites were lost in an Ariane rocket crash in December 1994, and seven other launches have ended in failure because rockets veered off course and had to be destroyed.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Title: UI work destroyed in blast

By: Kevin Ho Page: 1A Date: 5 June 96