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Tag Archive: Progeny Mk6
May 17 2019
Operations Summary – Week of 5/13/19
May 14 2019
Progeny Mk6 Block I Flight 11 (Radiation Field Study 9)
One of the instruments that was developed to fly on a future Extremis probe is small enough to be a payload for the Mk6 and studies charged particles – perfect for a shot into the inner radiation belt to test it out
Mar 15 2019
Progeny Mk6 Block I Flight 10 Analysis
This mission was the third attempt to successfully return samples of mystery goo from space, after they were lost on re-entry and lost at sea during previous missions. This mission also followed the previous launch that suffered numerous delays thanks to weather interference from the Monolith. A heavy-duty A/C system has since been installed in the Monolith temple to chill the interior and make it think there is no heat energy to form a storm with. This was based on evidence gathered from weather data that the Monolith was not able to feed energy to the storm itself. The prevention worked and during preflight after the rocket was powered on no severe weather patterns developed throughout the course of launch readiness. This allowed the launch team to hold the countdown and wait for a better launch window later in the middle of the day to send the rocket up when the radiation belt is closest to the surface to allow the payload to spend more time in the high-radiation region.
The Flight
Launching on schedule at 3pm local time, the rocket made a nominal ascent into space. Changes to the AFCS were minor, mainly to compensate for the new launch time and different payload instruments from the last flight. Some bugs were also fixed, including a rare serious one that on the last flight cut off rocket telemetry at launch. The rocket carried two separate payloads of mystery goo, one that would be exposed outside the radiation belt and another that would be exposed inside the belt. There was no room to include a radiation sensor so best estimates were used based on previous flights to determine about where the boundary of the belt would be at the time of the launch.
Feb 15 2019
Progeny Mk6 Block I Flight 9 Analysis
Launching back at the start of this week after being delayed for several days the latest flight of the Progeny Mk6 Block I saw a return to successful mission outcome after carrying material and biological samples through the inner radiation belt. The cause for the delay was thanks to the Monolith, which appeared to be able to generate a strong localized electrical storm. We believe at this time the storms are a response to us sending a rocket outside the planet’s magnetosphere. Although it did not directly damage the rocket thanks to the Ascension service towers serving as lightning rods, it still prevented the launch from occurring. Several attempts were made to bring the countdown to L-0 before finally just waiting for the storm to run out of energy. Lead Scientist Cheranne’s team has spent the past week working with meteorologists on examining the properties of the storm and coming up with a possible means of preventing it for future launches.
The Flight
Once the rocket was finally able to be launched, an issue occurred right at the moment of lift off when the mission script thought the rocket had landed, cutting off all telemetry data being sent to Launch Control and being logged onto the rocket’s hard drive. Controllers were still able to use the Tracking Station and the range vessel to follow the flight via RADAR to gain basic information about the rocket’s status and the Range Safety Officer was able to maintain visual in the early ascent thanks to clear skies so the self-destruct was not activated. Because controllers did not want to risk crashing the computer during ascent, it was not until tracking reported MECO that they began to work on an instruction patch that would re-enable the data logging.
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