A Federal government Proton rocket carrying Russian satellite operator RSCC’s Express-AM4R spacecraft suffered an anomaly in its third stage and failed to place the satellite in its intended orbit.
Khrunichev, the rocket’s manufacturer, said that a…
A Federal government Proton rocket carrying Russian satellite operator RSCC’s Express-AM4R spacecraft suffered an anomaly in its third stage and failed to place the satellite in its intended orbit.
Khrunichev, the rocket’s manufacturer, said that a Russian State commission of inquiry has been set up, and is currently reviewing the telemetry data to ascertain the cause of the failure.
According to the preliminary data analysis, the destruction of the third stage of the rocket occurred at an altitude of 160km. All component parts, as well as components of fuel, burned up in the atmosphere.
International Launch Services, which markets the Proton rocket to the commercial market, will also set up its own Failure Review Oversight Board.
As a matter of course, Proton operations are halted until the investigation is complete, the cause is determined and corrective actions are put in place.
A spokesperson for ILS said that any impact on the near term missions is currently being assessed. The next commercial launch on its manifest is Astra 2G for SES.
The failure was the Proton rocket’s fifth in less than five years, all of these were Federal government missions.
The last of these was in July 2013 when a Proton carrying three Glonass satellites failed shortly after take-off. That failure prompted the Russian state to call for a structural reform of the country’s space industry. This subsequently led to the formation of the United Rocket and Space Corporation, which will consolidate the country’s space manufacturing assets with the intention of improving the efficiency and reliability of the industry.
The failure also represented the third satellite that RSCC has lost to a launch anomaly in the past three years.
The first of those was Express-AM4, which crashed in August 2011 due to problem with the control system governing the Breeze-M upper stage.
Proceeds from Express-AM4’s insurance indemnity were quickly used to fund its replacement, AM4R, which was ordered from Airbus Defence and Space in September 2011.
Based on the same design as Express-AM4, the replacement satellite had a communications payload of 63 active transponders (30 in C-band, 28 in Ku-band, two in Ka-band, three in L-band) and 10 antennas. The spacecraft was due to be placed at 80E to provide TV broadcasting, communications networks and broadband access across the entire Russian Federation territory.
SatelliteFinance understands that Express-AM4R was fully insured for around US$217m through Russian insurer Ingosstrakh.
It is unclear whether RSCC plans to use the proceeds from this latest failure to fund another replacement satellite. The satellite operator was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.
