SPACE.com -- Design Defects May Have Doomed CONTOUR Spacecraft

CONTOUR being mated with solid rocket motor. CREDIT: NASA/APL

Artist's rendering shows the planned firing of CONTOUR's STAR 30BP solid-propellant rocket motor, designed to send the craft beyond Earth's orbit on Aug. 15, 2002. The craft would have been spinning at 60 revolutions per minute. The 50-second engine burn was meant to inject Contour into a solar orbit, on course to intercept comets.

In this subtracted image in which moving objects are revealed by pairs of images, one dark and one bright, taken by Jim Scotti with the Spacewatch 1.8-meter telescope on Kitt Peak on Aug. 16, there are two parallel trails near one of the predicted positions of the CONTOUR spacecraft. These trails were discovered and measured by Jeff Larsen.

Search for CONTOUR Spacecraft Abandoned

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	Design Defects May Have Doomed CONTOUR Spacecraft By Andrew Bridges Associated Press Science Writer posted: 03:45 pm ET 12 February 2003

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SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) -- An unmanned spacecraft that broke up last summer as it embarked on a mission to study comets was probably doomed by a defect in its design, NASA's chief engineer said Wednesday.

Contour had been orbiting the Earth for a month when it fired its rocket motor for 50 seconds Aug. 15 to send it on a trajectory to collect data from at least two comets. The spacecraft was never heard from again.

Days later, telescope images showed pieces moving away from Earth along the same path and at roughly the same velocity Contour was expected to travel. Scientists surmised the spacecraft had broken up.

Faulty design had placed the motor too far up the body of the spacecraft, allowing hot exhaust gases to apparently heat the probe and trigger its breakup, Theron Bradley Jr. told The Associated Press.

"That will be the leading cause in our report," he said.

Bradley heads the team investigating the loss of the $159 million Contour. He is also executive secretary of the nine-member independent board investigating the space shuttle Columbia disaster.

Bradley cautioned that other causes of the Contour accident still cannot be ruled out, including a collision with space debris. Space debris also is being considered as a cause of Columbia's disintegration.

Contour, short for Comet Nucleus Tour, was to meet up with comet Encke in 2003, Schwassman-Wachmann 3 in 2006 and perhaps comet d'Arrest in 2008.

The spacecraft was built for NASA by Johns Hopkins University with assistance from Cornell University. Johns Hopkins spokesman Michael Buckley said the Contour team had no comment on the investigation.

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