Satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space has announced that Yamal-402, the satellite that was placed into the wrong orbit by a Proton Breeze-M rocket in December 2012, has now been positioned at its final orbital location at 54.9E and is nominally…
Satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space has announced that Yamal-402, the satellite that was placed into the wrong orbit by a Proton Breeze-M rocket in December 2012, has now been positioned at its final orbital location at 54.9E and is nominally ready for operation.
SatelliteFinance understands that following the manoeuvres the spacecraft, which is owned by Russian operator Gazprom Space Systems, will have an estimated operational life of 11 years.
Gazprom has so far issued a notice of occurrence for Yamal-402 to the insurance market but will now file a partial claim for the loss of service. Based on the sum insured, the claim is likely to be in the region of US$110m.
Following the Proton anomaly, the satellite’s launch service provider International Launch Services formed a Failure Review Oversight Board (FROB) to investigate the incident. Concurrently a Russian Commission, convened by Proton’s manufacturer Khrunichev, is preparing a report concerning the root cause of the 8 December launch failure.
While the error was quickly identified, that the 4th and final burn of the Breeze-M engine ended about four minutes early and the spacecraft was subsequently separated in the wrong orbit, the reason for this has yet to be discovered.
