September 30, 2013

RIA Novosti – A Proton-M carrier rocket with a European telecoms satellite lifted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on Monday, for the first time since the launch failure in July, the Russian space agency said.

The suspension of Proton launches was ordered in July after a Proton-M rocket carrying three satellites for the Glonass positioning system, Russia’s answer to the GPS, crashed in a ball of flames, seconds after blasting off. The reason for the accident was that three sensors in the rocket had been installed upside down, an investigation revealed.

Monday’s launch of the Proton-M carrying the Astra 2E telecoms satellite was initially scheduled to take place on September 12, but was postponed indefinitely due to a glitch in its first stage.

“The Proton blastoff took place in a standard regime and as scheduled – at 1:38 Moscow time. The separation of the spacecraft from the Briz-M booster is expected to take place at 10:50 Moscow time [6:50 a.m. GMT],” a spokesman for the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

The July incident was the latest in a series of setbacks for Russia’s space program, which has been blighted by the loss of rockets and satellites, as well as a large corruption scandal around the Glonass program.

Image credit – © RIA Novosti

More from this category:
June 29, 2024

The second of nine Earth observation satellites (EOS) “Stilsat” is to be launched in 2025. Anton Burmak, executive director of Stilsat, named the dates. He…

full story
January 15, 2019

On January 14, 2019, Russian remote sensing satellites “Kanopus-B” №5 and №6, launched into orbit on the eve of the new 2019 year, transferred the…

full story
April 27, 2015

On April 26, 2015, according to the decision taken by State Commission rocket and space industry launching crews rolled-out Soyuz-2.1a booster with progress M-27M cargo…

full story
April 8, 2013

By the end of this decade Russia will be the only country able to send the crews to the ISS, Roscosmos manned space programs Head…

full story
December 19, 2018

On December 19, at 19:37:14 (Moscow time), the “Soyuz-ST-A” launch vehicle with the French satellite “CSO-1” was successfully launched from the launch site of the…

full story
June 10, 2020

Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner currently on space mission aboard the ISS tells about his mascot – a figure of famous Star Wars character Master Yoda…

full story
June 15, 2020

Soyuz MS-17 reserve crew members Anton Shkaplerov and Andrey Babkin go on with preflight trainings in GCTC. On June 11 they had Egress-2 simulator training…

full story
November 10, 2014

At 06:58, Moscow time (03:58, local time),  on November 10 Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft descent module successfully landed in Arkalyk region. The landing took place nominally….

full story