Ada rocket launches Ada satellite

["Jean-Pierre Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr>]

Tonight, Ariane 511 (whose flight control systems are in Ada) launched the Envisat1 satellite (with lots of Ada inside), a huge
environmental survey satellite. This was a real challenge:

-Envisat1 is the biggest satellite ever built in Europe, and the biggest environment survey satellite ever launched: 10m long (26m
deployed), for a weight of 8211Kg)

-Since it is a sun-synchronous satellite, the launch window was 0 (i.e. it had to be launched a the exact second).

-It was the first time an Ariane5 launched a polar satellite (i.e. towards north instead of East).

-It was the first time the long cap was used

-and more....

Thanks to new fuel-saving algorithms, it was possible to turn off the engine when the exact orbit was reached (with more than 3s
remaining fuel - quite a lot for such a rocket). Here is the result:

Requirement vs Achieved:
Req: Altitude: 7152.4km +- 7.5km. Ach: 7152.4km
Req: Orbital position: 70.3 degrees +- 1.9. Ach: 69.8
Req: Inclination: 98.5 degrees +-1.1. Ach: 98.5

All details available from http://www.arianespace.com/

--
---------------------------------------------------------
           J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
Visit Adalog's web site at http://www.adalog.fr