Russia Orders Probe of Latest Space Launch Failure

 Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev has ordered the formation of a special commission to probe the failed launch early Saturday of a Russian rocket carrying a Mexican satellite into space.

The probe announcement came just hours after the Proton-M rocket and its payload exploded in the skies over Kazakhstan about eight minutes after liftoff. The Russian federal space agency Roscosmos, in an early report, said a problem in the rocket's steering engines surfaced in the suborbital third stage of the launch.

Russia's Interfax news agency, quoting a Roscosmos spokeswoman, said the Medvedev probe order included instructions to determine the "exact causes" of the failed launch and to "make proposals for personal and financial accountability for this incident."

The last failed launch of a Proton-M occurred one year ago and was also found to have been caused by a problem in the rocket's third stage.  There had been six subsequent successful launches before Saturday's failure.

Mexican officials said the Boeing-manufactured satellite was to have provided services for an array of government agencies, including disaster relief, rural education and other government operations.  The Ministry of Communications and Transportation also said the satellite was 100 percent insured.

In a separate space failure Saturday, Roscosmos reported that the engines of a Progress space ship docked at the International Space Station failed to ignite and were therefore unable to make an adjustment to the orbit of the space station.  The agency said the station's crew was not in any danger and that the failure was under investigation.
  voanews.com
16/5/15
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• Russia on Saturday lost a Mexican satellite on launch just hours after a glitch with a manoeuvre involving the International Space Station, the latest in a string of embarrassing failures for its troubled space programme.

Russia's Roscosmos space agency said in a brief statement that a Proton-M rocket carrying a Mexican satellite had suffered a problem on launch early Saturday.

"An emergency situation took place when the Proton-M rocket launched with a MexSat-1 satellite. The reasons are being identified," the agency said.

"The Mexican satellite is lost. Launches of rockets of the Proton type will be grounded until the reason is identified," a source in the space industry told RIA Novosti state news agency.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin "naturally was informed" of the satellite failure, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, cited by the Interfax news agency, declining further comment.

• The failure came just hours after a separate glitch in which a Russian Progress spacecraft docked to the ISS failed to switch on its engines on command from mission control in a planned manoeuvre to shift the ISS into a higher orbit.

Russia's space programme has experienced a troubling number of accidents in recent years.

RIA Novosti state news agency criticised what it called "a negative record for Roscosmos—several accidents in space in three weeks."

On April 28, another Progress supply ship heading to the ISS lost communications and crashed to Earth in an apparent problem with its Soyuz rocket, prompting delays in the ferrying of astronauts to and from the orbiting station.

British singer Sarah Brightman announced Wednesday that she would not fly to the ISS as a space tourist in September as planned, citing personal reasons. Russian media speculated she pulled out over safety fears..........[phys.org]
    16/5/15