Orion 3

Orion 3 was an American spacecraft which was intended for use by Orion Network Systems, as a geostationary communications satellite. It was to have been positioned in geostationary orbit at a longitude of 139° East, from where it was to have provided communications services to Asia and Oceania. Due to a malfunction during launch, it was instead delivered to a useless low Earth orbit.

Orion 3 was constructed by Hughes Space and Communications, based on an HS-601HP satellite bus. It was equipped with 10 G/H band (IEEE C band) and 33 J band (IEEE K_u band) transponders, and at launch it had a mass of 4,300 kilograms (9,500 lb). The satellite was expected to remain operational for around fifteen years. Orion Network Systems merged with Loral Space & Communications in 1999 after the Orion 3 launch failure.

Launch

The Orion 3 satellite was launched on the second flight of the Delta III rocket, using the standard 8930 configuration. The launch occurred from Space Launch Complex 17B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, at 01:00:00 GMT on 5 May 1999. The first stage and solid rocket motors performed as expected, and the first burn of the second stage was conducted as planned, injecting the spacecraft into low Earth orbit. Following this, the rocket entered a coast phase, before the second stage restarted for what was planned to be a 162 second burn to insert Orion 3 into a geosynchronous transfer orbit. Around 3.4 seconds after igniting, the RL-10-B-2 engine of the second stage cut off after a malfunction was detected, leaving the spacecraft in an orbit of around 160 by 1,284 kilometres (99 mi × 798 mi), with 29.5° inclination. It was the second failure of an RL-10 powered rocket in less than a week, after the Centaur upper stage of a Titan IV rocket failed during the launch of USA-143 on 30 April, although this incident was later attributed to a programming error.

List of Constellation missions

The Constellation Program was NASA's planned future human spaceflight program between 2005 and 2009, which aimed to develop a new crewed spacecraft (Orion) and a pair of launchers (Ares I and Ares V) to continue servicing the International Space Station and return to the Moon.

As of 2009, a single unmanned suborbital launch test (Ares I-X) had been flown, with crewed missions anticipated to begin between 2014 (by NASA projections) and 2017-19 (according to the independent Augustine Commission). On February 1, 2010, President Obama announced that he intended to cancel the program with the U.S. 2011 fiscal year budget. A revised proposal in April confirmed that the Orion spacecraft would be retained for future mission beyond low earth orbit, with the Ares launchers redeveloped into the Space Launch System. However, the Constellation Program itself was cancelled, with low-earth orbit operations transferred to the Commercial Crew Development program.

Development of mission plans