The launch of the first Romanian space shuttle ‘Helen’ from the Black Sea could not be carried out on Saturday either, because of issues with the balloon inflation, therefore the whole operation had to be postponed. Representatives of the Romanian Association for Cosmonautics and Aeronautics (ARCA) say that, when the balloon was almost completely inflated, it suddenly spun and, driven by the air currents, the air started getting out. The specialists could have tried putting it into the original position and re-inflate it, but they realized the operation could not have been completed on Saturday as the sun was about to set.
The launch of the first Romanian space shuttle had been initially scheduled for Tuesday, November 10, but the event had to be rescheduled for the week-end because of the adverse weather conditions. A new attempt was due on Friday, November 13, but it was abandoned also because of the bad weather. The launching of ‘Helen’ – a space shuttle designed and developed by ARCA, is the last training within the Google Lunar X Prize contest and, implicitly, the joining by Romania of the club of states developing large-scale space programmes.
previous post
next post
