Orbiter SN1 Fails Before Mission Completion
On January 3, 2023, Launcher successfully launched its first spacecraft … Orbiter SN1 … to orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 (Transporter-6). Upon successful separation of Launcher’s 24-inch separation system, the Orbiter SN1 powered up and communicated to the ground via command uplink and telemetry downlink during its first scheduled ground station pass.
"We would like to sincerely apologize to our customers and their team, partners and end customers. We have been in constant communication with them since launch day, including recovery attempts."
Launcher news release.
Launcher says it was also able to communicate with Obiter SN1 for the duration of expected battery life. Unfortunately, after that time period, the vehicle stopped operating as there was not enough power generated by the spacecraft's solar panels due to an orientation control issue caused by a fault in the Orbiter SN1 GPS antenna system.
While achieving many internal mission objectives in the development of our Orbiter spacecraft and collecting critical data from the successful on-orbit operation, unfortunately, the customer payloads were not deployed.
"We would like to sincerely apologize to our customers and their team, partners and end customers. We have been in constant communication with them since launch day, including recovery attempts. We have committed to accommodations beyond our contractual requirements to our customers on this mission," the company said in a news release.
Orbiter SN1 Failure Leads to Improvements or Next Mission Attempt
Launcher has designed an improved GPS radio and antenna subsystem and is also taking steps in software development to ensure that a repeated GPS failure would not have any fatal impact on future missions.
Other improvements include:
Improved GNC software and robust spacecraft safe mode
Fully implemented a backup customer spacecraft separation system
Improved Orbiter’s battery charger to allow charging and recovery in nearly all spacecraft anomalous events as well as doubled the battery capacity
"We are incredibly grateful that our current partners and customers are continuing to join us on our next flight. With higher confidence from these hard-learned lessons and improvements, we will be back in space this year with Orbiter SN3 in June 2023 (SpaceX Transporter-8) and again in October 2023 (SpaceX Transporter-9)," the company said.
(Source: Launcher news release. Images provided)