A Proton-M rocket carrying a military satellite was launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on 21 September, marking the vehicle’s return to flight since a failure a month beforehand.
On 17 August, Russian satellite operator RSCC’s Express-AM4…
A Proton-M rocket carrying a military satellite was launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on 21 September, marking the vehicle’s return to flight since a failure a month beforehand.
On 17 August, Russian satellite operator RSCC’s Express-AM4 satellite failed to enter geosynchronous orbit after it was launched on a Proton-M rocket by Khrunichev. As a result, all Proton-M flights were temporarily suspended.
But shortly after, Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, stated that it would lift the ban on preparations for launches of Proton-M rockets with Breeze-M boosters.
“The Commission has concluded that, in the process of formalising the Breeze-M operating timeline, the time interval to manipulate the gyro platform into position was made unduly short. This resulted in an off-nominal orientation of the Breeze-M and, as the consequence, in injecting the spacecraft into an off-design orbit,” Roscosmos explained.
On 30 September, another Proton-M vehicle was launched by International Launch Services (ILS), placing into orbit SES’ QuetzSat-1. Before that, ILS had conducted its own review, via the Failure Review Oversight Board (FROB).
The FROB results were not publicly disclosed but ILS said: “The Russian Inter-Agency Commission concluded that the cause was related to incorrect software inputs. Based on the telemetry data obtained during the mission, it was concluded that all systems of the launch vehicle and upper stage performed nominally. However, with the mission specific flight software error caused the spacecraft to be injected into an off-nominal orbit.”
In a separate release on its website, ILS added: “Immediately after the conclusion of the FROB and implementation of corrective actions, ILS worked towards establishing new dates to launch the QuetzSat-1 satellite for SES and the ViaSat-1 satellite for ViaSat.”
ViaSat-1 was launched on 19 October.
As space authorities were scrambling to investigate the issue, there were concerns that the Proton failure could have a huge knock-on effect on future launches this year.
Before the failure, ten Proton-M launches for commercial satellites had been scheduled before the end of the year.
The Russian space industry experienced another failure soon after the Proton-M incident. On 24 August, a Soyuz-U rocket carrying a Progress cargo capsule failed to reach the ISS. This rocket has a design similar to the Soyuz-FG that had been set to launch crew to the ISS in September.
As a result, the return to Earth of the manned spacecraft Soyuz TMA-21, scheduled for 8 September, was delayed to 16 September, as well as the next manned mission to ISS, Soyuz TMA-22, originally supposed to launch on 30 September. It is now expected to take place on 14 November.
