Advanced Russian Communications Satellite Lost in Rocket Failure - Video

An advanced Russian communications satellite was destroyed Thursday (May 15) when its Proton rocket booster failed minutes after liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Express AM4R spacecraft, worth approximately $200 million and built by EADS Astrium, was supposed to begin a 15-year mission beaming radio, television, broadband Internet and telephone services across Russia and neighbouring countries.

But a few minutes after the 12,720-pound (5,770-kilogram) Express AM4R satellite launched from Baikonur, Russia's primary space base, its Proton rocket ran into a problem.

The failure occurred during the third stage of the Proton's ascent into orbit, according to a statement by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, the Moscow-based manufacturer of the Proton launcher.

An announcer declared an emergency during a live webcast of the launch, and Khrunichev's statement also described the incident as an "emergency situation."

Khrunichev said experts were analyzing telemetry to determine the cause of the failure.

A report by Interfax said debris from the rocket may have fallen in the Altai or Amur regions of Russia's Far East.

Spewing a brilliant flame of blue exhaust, the 19-story Proton rocket lifted off at 2142 GMT (5:42 p.m. EDT) to start a nine-hour flight to deploy the powerful European-built Express AM4R telecommunications satellite for Russian government and commercial customers.

The launch was at 3:42 a.m. local time at Baikonur.

The hydrazine-fueled rocket disappeared from the view of a ground-based tracking camera a few minutes later, with no visible signs of any trouble.

But a problem occurred about 545 seconds, or about 9 minutes, after liftoff, according to a report by the semi-official Itar-Tass news agency.

Another report by the Interfax media service said the time of the failure was about 500 seconds after launch.

Both of the times reported for the anomaly occurred during the firing of the Proton rocket's third stage, which is powered by an RD-0213 main engine generating 131,000 pounds of thrust.

A four-nozzle vernier steering engine is also mounted on the third stage to keep the rocket pointed in the right direction.

The rocket's guidance, navigation and control system is a triple-redundant digital avionics package on the third stage.

Advanced Humanoid 'Atlas' Robot Unveiled - Video

Boston Dynamics developed the robot for DARPA. It will compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in December 2013. 

Advancing the technology to assist humans in disaster response is the goal.

DARPA Advanced Robotic Hand prototype shows its moves - Video

Robotic hands designed and engineered for versatility and dexterity in handling harmful, harmless, small, large, light, and heavy objects tease robotics teams today.

The US government's DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is getting attention this month in its steps forward to develop robotic hands that can do the jobs of the human hand's advanced movements, but capable of being built at less prohibitive costs.

The recently released DARPA video reveals how far robotic hands have come in manipulative mastery.

The three-fingered hand, hardly human-like in appearance, nonetheless excels in function, as it is shown picking up objects from keys to transit cards to basketballs and heavy (50 pound) weights.

The DARPA-funded work was conducted by iRobot of Bedford, Massachusetts, with support from Harvard University and Yale University.

The hand prototype is part of DARPA's Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) project, on DARPA's ARM-H program track that looks at dexterous hands at a reasonable cost.

The GRAB Lab site at Yale reported that "We have developed a new hand design for the DARPA ARM-H program, in collaboration with iRobot Corporation and researchers at Harvard University.

This hand is underactuated, but retains critical in-hand manipulation capabilities such as reorienting grasped objects, and picking up small objects such as keys and pens.

Of the three designs submitted to DARPA, our hand was selected for distribution to all participants in the DARPA ARM-S program."

The government program is specifically interested in lower-cost robot manipulators that can handle things with less human control.

The interest is also in finding autonomous manipulation systems that can surpass the performance level of remote manipulation systems that are controlled directly by a human operator.

The iRobot, Harvard and Yale effort has resulted in a hand advanced enough to perform maneuvers that call for precision at a cost that makes a difference.

According to reports, the prototype could be made at $3,000 per unit in batches of 1,000 or more, in contrast to the $50,000 price of current technology.