Lost rocket splashed down near mutiny island of Pitcairn
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AUCKLAND, March 16 (AFP) -
A wayward commercial rocket which disappeared Monday after being fired off a platform in the Central Pacific came down near Britains lonely Pitcairn Island, the islands Auckland based Commissioner Leon Salt told AFP Thursday.
The rocket owners, Sea Launch Limited Partnership, 40 percent owned by the Boeing Commercial Space Company, only Thursday advised Pitcairn that it had been in the firing line.
The location of the various pieces suggests the rocket flew over most of French Polynesia despite earlier assurances that it would not fly over populated areas.
Salt said Sea Launch, and the Apia based South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), had advised them that the rocket had come down near Ducie Island, an unpopulated atoll 470 kilometres (290 miles) east of Pitcairn and part of British territory.
Sea Launch on Monday fired its third Russian-Ukrainian three stage Zenit-3SL rocket from a Norwegian built oil rig moored on the Equator 370
kilometres (230 miles) south-east of Kiribatis Kiritimati Atoll.
The rocket was lifting a Hughes Space and Communications HS-601 satellite weighing 2722 kilograms (6,050-pound) for Londons ICO Global Communications Ltd. into a medium earth orbit.
Sea Launch communications director Paula Korn Wednesday said that the rocket had been fired from the platform and had taken a 45 degree trajectory.
"We believe it went down about 2000 miles (3218 kilometres) (south-east) from the launch platform," she said.
It was at an altitude of around 160 kilometres (100 miles) when contact was lost.
Asked if they had been in contact with French authorities she could not say, other than to stress the company believed it had been in a "no populated area."
Daily news of French Pacific territories issued by the South Pacific Community (SPC) quoted French Polynesia High Commission spokesman Patrick Martinez saying the first stage had been found also, north-west of the Marquesas group of islands in French Polynesia.
"The second stage of the rocket, and probably the British satellite it was carrying, fell between Pitcairn island and (uninhabited) Ducie atoll, some 700 kilometres south-west of the Gambier group of islands."
French Polynesia controls the upper air space over Pitcairn.
Around 50 people live on 450 hectares (1112 acres) Pitcairn Island, most of them descendants of those who in 1789 mutinied against Captain William Bligh on board Bounty.
Salt said a German cruise liner, World Discovery, was due to visit Ducie next Tuesday.
"We will ask them to look out for pieces of the rocket," he said.
Ducie was a pretty desolate place' with only one form of vegetation and millions of birds, mainly petrels.
Last June a British yacht visiting the atoll was surprised to find an unmarked military Sea Hawk helicopter on the atoll.
Although it was photographed there has been no explanation of whose helicopter it was or what it was doing there.
The SPREP map, based on information from Sea Launch, indicated that the rocket would have flown over Ducie anyway.
ICO are planning seven other similar launches. |
