Eutelsat’s KA-SAT could miss its 20 December launch after the Russian government banned the use of all Proton rockets following a failure to loft three Glonass navigation birds.
A special commission of government and industry officials has been set up to…
Eutelsat’s KA-SAT could miss its 20 December launch after the Russian government banned the use of all Proton rockets following a failure to loft three Glonass navigation birds.
A special commission of government and industry officials has been set up to determine the cause of 5 December’s abortive launch, which aimed to complete the Glonass constellation.
The rocket’s Block DM-03 upper stage was built and operated by Russia’s Energia, and its three lower Proton M stages were all built and operated by Khrunichev, the majority owner of launch service provider ILS.
Speaking to state-owned media on 7 December, Anatoly Perminov, head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, said no Proton rockets will be launched until reasons for the recent mission failure are identified and resolved. The satellites were insured domestically for a rumoured US$65m.
According to Perminov, the taskforce aims to identify the failure’s cause this month. Although he suggested the issue could be resolved as early as two weeks’ time, this still cuts close to the planned launch of KA-SAT, which uses the rocket under investigation.
However, a spokeswoman for ILS told SatelliteFinance that there are no changes to the bird’s schedule.
“Integration plans for the KA-SAT mission are continuing as planned, and we expect to receive the Commission results before the 20 December launch date,” she said.
The company expects to receive an interim report on the matter before 14 December.
Meanwhile, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has instructed his government to determine whether funds allotted for the Glonass programme have been wisely spent.
In a terse statement on the Kremlin’s official website, the government outlined its intention to “name the people responsible” for the loss of the three satellites, which fell into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
Prior to the launch, the Glonass constellation had 20 satellites in operation and two serving as back-ups. Only 18 are required to be in operation to cover Russia, but 24 are needed to also cover the rest of the world.
State-owned media also cites Perminov confirming that two back-up Glonass satellites have been initiated to move into active orbit. An additional Glonass bird is already scheduled for launch this month on a Soyuz rocket, and Russian manufacturer Reshetnev Informational Satellite Systems is building another Glonass satellite to complete the 24 set. This final Glonass bird could be launched on a Soyuz with a Fregat upper stage by March 2011.
Early reports suggest the Glonass cluster was not injected into its intended orbit because of a programming error within the rocket’s new Block DM-03 upper stage, which was undergoing its maiden flight.
If it is an issue with the upper stage then this could well impact Sea Launch more than ILS given that the latter uses a Breeze-M upper stage while Energia owned Sea Launch uses the Block DM.
Back in 28 June 2004, an anomaly to an older version of the Block DM upper stage led to a commercial payload being placed in a lower orbit than planned. Despite this, manufacturer Space Systems/Loral was later able to realign the Telstar 18 satellite to its correct orbital position.
