Science and Health

Rocket booster behind Russia's space launch failure

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-12-07 00:07

MOSCOW - Failure of rocket booster may be behind the failed Sunday launch of three Glonass-M navigation satellites, Russian deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov said Monday.

"The satellites themselves have nothing to do with this failure," said Ivanov, who is in charge of the creation of the Glonass global navigation system project.

The three satellites, which were launched Sunday from Kazakh Baikonur space center, failed to enter their designated orbit and crashed in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii Islands after falling off course.

Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos has started an investigation, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

Earlier, the experts said that the engines of the Proton-M has worked properly and the reason behind failure was mathematical miscalculation of the orbit's parameters.

The crash may not produce severe damage to the Glonass navigation system, the Russian equivalent of the US Global Positioning System (GPS).

The 26 satellites currently in orbit and two more spare satellites are capable of securing the signals to cover the Russian territory, a defense official said Sunday.

The Sunday launch was the 11th Proton launch of this year. The previous ten launches, including two that positioned Glonass navigation satellites, were successful.