August 6, 2013
Categories: Roscosmos, Russia

Launches of light-class Rokot carrier rockets will resume in the first half of September following a nine-month suspension due to attempts to fix a glitch in the rocket’s booster, Russian space agency, Roscosmos, said.

The glitch was detected during a Rokot launch in January when the rocket’s Briz-KM booster failed to deliver three military satellites into their designated orbits. As a result, one of the satellites was lost.

Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin told reporters Monday that the glitch had been fixed and the next launch of a Rokot vehicle carrying Gonets low-orbit telecoms satellites will be conducted in early September.

Russia’s space program suffered a series of setbacks in the past few years. In a most recent incident, a Proton-M rocket carrying three satellites for the Glonass positioning system, Russia’s answer to GPS, crashed in a ball of flames, seconds after blasting off from Russia’s Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on July 2.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin heavily criticized Russia’s space industry on Monday, lambasting technical incompetence and calling for structural reform across the whole sector during a meeting of a commission appointed to investigate the Proton launch failure.

In July, Russia’s Audit Chamber said the Federal Space Program was ineffective, and blighted by poor management and use of funds for space projects.

More from this category:
July 20, 2019

Today, on July 20, 2019 at 19:28:21 (Moscow time), a launch vehicle “Soyuz-FG” with a spacecraft “Soyuz MS-13” launched from the site № 1 (Gagarinsky…

full story
February 11, 2014

Preparations for the first Proton mission of this year proceed as scheduled. A Proton is to orbit the 5000-kg Turkish TurkSat 4A satellite by mid-February….

full story
1000 days in orbit: Russian cosmonaut Kononenko sets a world record
June 6, 2024

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko has become the world’s first person to spend a total of 1,000 days in Earth orbit. The record was set tonight….

full story
April 24, 2013

The cooperation between Gagarin cosmonaut Training Center and Moscow State University lasts for several decades. In 1983-2003 it was the most efficient when GCTC and…

full story
June 23, 2020

Russia has begun to develop the first moon landing mission scheme Russia has begun to develop a scheme for the first mission of landing cosmonauts…

full story
June 30, 2015

Stock of food and water stored onboard the ISS will enable the crew to wait for the next Progress M-28M cargo vehicle arriving on July…

full story
July 15, 2020

45 years ago, on July 15, 1975, the first joint space flight of representatives of different countries started in the history of mankind. The start…

full story
December 12, 2013

The docking of American Cygnus cargo vehicle with the ISS may be put off because of ISS thermal control system pump failure, – NASA representative…

full story