SOCHI, RUSSIA - Russian President Vladimir Putin has been informed about the Saturday crash of a Proton-M launch vehicle carrying the Mexican communications satellite MexSat-1.
“Naturally, it has been reported to the president,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Saturday.
He refrained from further comments on the matter.
The Proton launch vehicle carrying the Mexican satellite lifted off
from the Baikonur space center on Saturday morning. A space rocket
industry source told Interfax-AVN shortly after the liftoff that the
Proton’s third stage engine emergency cutoff occurred on the 498th
second of the flight.
It was presumed originally that the third stage, the Briz-M upper
stage, and the Mexican satellite may have crashed in the Trans-Baikal
territory of Russia. Roscosmos said later that the rocket system’s and
the satellite’s debris burned up in the atmosphere.
The MexSat satellite was manufactured by Boeing Satellite Systems
under a contract with the Mexican Transport and Communications Ministry.
The satellite is based on the Boeing 702 HP platform, weighs around 5.4
tonnes and carries three-band relay antennas.
The satellite was intended to provide communications services in
Mexico and the central part of South America. Its orbital life was
expected to be at least 15 years.
The Proton-M launch vehicle and the Briz-M upper stage were
manufactured by the Moscow-based Khrunichev Space Research and
Production Center. As is usually the case with all commercial launches
carried out by Russia, this launch was provided by International Launch
Services (ILS), a Russian-U.S. joint venture holding exclusive rights to
the commercial use of the Proton heavy launch vehicle.
Another incident occurred aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday.
A space industry source told Interfax-AVN on Saturday with reference
to preliminary findings that the station’s onboard computer had issued a
command cancelling the planned orbit adjustment maneuver.
“According to preliminary findings, the onboard computer of the
Russian segment of the ISS received information indicating that the
Progress cargo spacecraft’s engines were not ready to carry out the
orbit adjustment and issued a command aborting the operation.
Specialists are currently analyzing telemetry to find out the reasons of
this,” the source said.
The analysis of the situation may take several days, after which
another attempt to adjust the orbit will be made, the source said. “The
mission control will decide whether it is better to use the Progress
cargo spacecraft’s or the Zarya module’s engines. In any case, the
engines’ state and preparedness will be tested in advance, and a new
ballistic task will be set,” he said.
