Screen Capture of Proton MexSat-1 Launch The Russian aerospace industry suffered a new failure overnight as another Proton booster, this one operating for U.S. marketer International Launch Services, failed to reach orbit. The failure occurred approximately one minute before the payload, with Briz-M upper stage still attached, was supposed to separate from the rocket’s 3rd […]
Roscosmos has reported that the stricken M-27M Progress resupply vessel reentered the Earth’s atmosphere overnight. The statement, which is on the agency’s website (in Russian), says that the craft “ceased to exist over the central Pacific Ocean, and that the results of an investigation will be presented no later than May 13th. Further reports in […]
Tuesday’s loss of the Orbital Sciences Antares booster carrying a Cygnus cargo vessel to the International Space Station, a failure of space hardware, is also bringing more attention to matters of space policy, where the news is both good and bad. To begin with, the explosion of the Antares rocket only six seconds into flight, […]
Orbital Sciences has suffered a major accident in the launch of the Orb-3 mission to the International Space Station. Six seconds into a launch which was delayed one day due to a boat straying into the safety zone, the Antares booster carrying a Cygnus resupply vessel appeared to lose thrust and come crashing back into […]
Image Credit: Russian Space Agency The headlines (particularly those from Britain) focused on the prurient: Russia: SEXY LIZARDS which landed FROM SPACE are ALL Dead (The Register) Russia confirms death of five geckos on space sex mission (The Guardian) Sex geckos die in orbit on Russian space project (The BBC!) But what deserves a bit […]
It was something of a Black Friday for the launch industry yesterday. In addition to the SpaceX F9-R “explosion” in Texas, a bizarre story has emerged regarding an Arianespace launch which happened the same day. The launch, which took place aboard a Russian built commercial Soyuz out of French Guiana and under the Arianespace banner, […]
Russia may soon need its own trampoline. Overnight, a Russian Proton-M booster lifted off from Baikonur carrying the Express AM4R communications satellite built by EADS Astrium. Like all too many Proton payloads in recent years, it did not reach the correct orbit, or in this case, any orbit at all. Instead it suffered a complete […]
Sea Launch released the results of its Failure Review Oversight Board last week regarding the January 31st loss of Intelsat 27. As earlier reports indicated, the failure was assigned to the BIM hydraulic pump built in Ukraine, which provides steering pressurization for the Russian built main engine. Since emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2010, Sea Launch […]
Sea Launch A G suffered a major, and possibly crippling setback in efforts to regain a meaningful market position in the early hours of Friday morning (EST) when its Zenit 3-SL launch vehicle veered off its course immediately following liftoff. 50 seconds later, the main engine shut down, terminating thrust and sending the rocket and its Intelsat -27 payload […]
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