Following the loss of a European Space Agency satellite – Cryosat – that was designed to map polar ice, the Russian Space Agency has suspended all flights using the Rokot booster system.
The rocket’s second stage failed to separate following the launch and the Cryosat satellite fell into the Arctic Ocean, Russian and European officials said. The second stage did not separate apparently because a missing command from the onboard flight control system caused the main engine to continue to operate after it should have cut off, burning all the fuel on board, the European Space Agency said in a statement on its Web site.
Mosnews also reports the failure of another, experimental, Russian rocket system:
Demonstrator was launched on Oct. 7 from the nuclear-powered submarine Borisoglebsk in the northern Barents Sea. It was first reported that it had safely landed in the Kura test range on Russia’s Far East Kamchatka Peninsula but the Russian military were unable to determine the landing location and later said they had lost the vehicle.
This was the fourth test of Demonstrator, with the previous attempts also failing due to various problems in the launch stages or landing.
As Mosnews goes on to report, the failures are not doing much for the Russian space agency’s image around the world:
It also hurt the Russians, who have been aggressively trying to move into the commercial satellite launch business.
Although, having said that, just who is competing with Russia in the commercial satellite business these days?
One final piece of space news, while I’m rounding things up – RIA Novosti reports that Russia is to withdraw 2,800 troops from its launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan over the next couple of years.
“If [military] launches occur once in four-five months, we do not need so many people,” Ivanov said. “We have excessive troops there.”Plesetsk (the northern part of European Russia) will gradually become the main military launching site of the Russian Defense Ministry but will also see some civil launches, he added.
It’s not often you hear of Russia voluntarily withdrawing troops from Central Asia, and I’d imagine the Kazakh government are secretly thrilled by the announcement, even if it does indicate that Baikonur is no longer the cash cow it once was.
(For more on Plesetsk, by the way, see the next post. It’s located just a few miles from a closed city).
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