Status
Partial Failure
Artemis & BSAT-2b
Thu Jul 12, 2001 21:58 UTC
Upper stage underperformed, payloads were placed in a useless orbit. Artemis was raised to its target orbit at the expense of operational fuel; BSat was not recoverable. Flight V142.
Rocket
Mission Details
Artemis
Artemis is a geostationary earth orbit satellite (GEOS) for telecommunications, built by Alenia Spazio for ESA. It originally reached an orbit much lower than planned (590 km x 17487 km) due to a malfunction in the launch vehicle's upper stage. It was remotely reconfigured to reach its intended station using a novel procedure.
BSAT-2b
BSAT-2b was a geostationary communications satellite ordered by B-SAT which was designed and manufactured by Orbital Sciences Corporation on the STAR-1 platform. It was designed to be stationed on the 110° East orbital slot along its companion BSAT-2a where it would provide redundant high-definition direct television broadcasting across Japan.
But the Ariane 5G rocket had an anomaly during its launch. It left BSAT-2b stranded in an orbit too low for its propulsion system to compensate and the spacecraft was written off. BSAT ordered BSAT-2c immediately to replace it. It decayed and burned in the atmosphere on January 28, 2014.