Proton Rocket Failure Probe Finds No Evidence of Misconduct

The interdepartmental state commission investigating the recent Proton-M carrier rocket launch failure has so far found no evidence supporting the theory that it was caused by deliberate misconduct, Russia's space agency Roscosmos said Thursday.

"The human factor version, including the possibility of a deliberate violation of production norms, is considered during an investigation into every accident or incident, it's a standard procedure. The commission has no information to prove it," Roscosmos said in a statement.

The commission still views technical failures in the third stage control engine as the most likely cause of the May 16 crash, in which Russia's most technologically advanced satellite was lost, the statement said.

On Thursday, the head of the government commission investigating the Proton crash, Alexander Danilyuk, said he believed a third stage engine glitch was at fault, while not ruling out that the failure occurred because of sabotage.

Last week, Danilyuk said four causes of the Proton-M accident were being considered. The commission quickly excluded a failure in the rocket's control systems.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin on Thursday criticized investigators for creating troubled waters too soon with half-baked theories.

The Proton-M rocket suffered an unknown failure and was lost May 16, about nine minutes after being launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. The upper stage and its payload, the advanced Express-AM4R communications satellite, burned up in the atmosphere above China, with no debris reaching Earth.

The Express-AM4R satellite was manufactured by Astrium, an aerospace subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS), and was built as part of Russia's space program for 2006-2015.

The crashed rocket was insured for 7.8 billion rubles ($224 million). A replacement for the spacecraft will be built in three years time, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media said.

ILS Forced to Lower Launch Prices in wake of Failures

International Launch Services (ILS) on March 18 said it has been forced to reduce prices in the wake of its December failure in order to accommodate customers paying higher insurance premiums to use ILS’s Proton heavy-lift rocket.

ILS said it hopes that its prices will recover as the Reston, Va.-based company proceeds with six planned launches between March and August and re-establishes its credibility among customers.

In a press briefing here during the Satellite 2013 conference, ILS President Philip R. Slack said the three failures of Russian Proton rockets in the past two years has caused insurers to bump up their rates for commercial Proton launches.

“A year ago we were within one-quarter or one-half a point of Ariane,” Slack said of ILS’s principal competitor, Arianespace of Europe.

“We would be a couple of points higher today. We obviously needed to respond to market pressure. We expect to be able to bring those rates back down with seven Proton launches in the next six months.”

The Russian Proton rocket is returning to flight with commercial Mexican satellite fleet operator Satmex’s Satmex 8 satellite.

The launch is scheduled for March 27 from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Following Satmex 8 is the scheduled mid-April launch of Canadian fleet operator Telesat’s Anik G1.

Proton will continue launching once a month through August.

Slack declined to disclose the order of the following launches.

Slack said the failure review board organized by ILS after the December failure, which met following a Russian government review, featured 15 ILS customers, three insurance underwriters and three industry experts.

Global insurance underwriters were briefed recently in Reston and London.

“Customer confidence is returning,” Slack said. “We need a string of launch successes, and we think when this happens Proton will win back the confidence of the market.”

The Proton vehicle has launched an average 10 times per year for the past several years. Slack said it should return to that rate this year.

The December failure — which put a Russian telecommunications satellite into a bad orbit, reducing the satellite’s service life --- forced ILS to a slow start this year.

Slack said that despite this, 2013 “should be a decent year for both launches and orders. We are hoping for five or six orders this year.”

Slack and John L. Palme, ILS’s vice president for programs and operations, said Proton prime contractor and ILS owner Khrunichev Space Center of Moscow, has embarked on a year-long quality-improvement program to bring the Breeze-M upper stage’s demonstrated reliability nearer to its theoretical reliability.

Several recent Proton failures have been laid to issues related to the Breeze-M stage.

Khrunichev has also begun development of a 5-meter-diameter fairing for Proton, a feature offered on competitor Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket, and by Space Exploration Technologies Corp.’s (SpaceX) Falcon 9 rocket, scheduled to begin making commercial flights later this year.

The larger Proton fairing is scheduled to be ready for flight in the second half of 2016, Slack said.

Khrunichev is also finishing what it calls the Phase 4 performance enhancement of Proton, which will increase the maximum weight of a satellite it can carry to geostationary transfer orbit to 6,350 kilograms, a 200-kilogram increase.

Russian Proton rocket fails to put satellites into orbit - Britz-M Booster Failure

An unmanned Russian rocket failed to deliver two communications satellites to their proposed orbit when problems with a booster occurred after launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday.

According to the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, the Britz-M secondary booster module of the Proton-M rocket shut down before it was supposed to.

The booster fired the engine on schedule during the third burn, but only burned for seven seconds of the scheduled eighteen minutes and five seconds needed to achieve the desired orbit.

There is no hope that the satellites will separate from the booster and reach the orbit they were supposed to.

The rocket carried the Indonesian Telkom-3, which was manufactured by Russia’s ISS-Reshetnev and was the first that Indonesia has bought from Russia.

The satellite included communications equipment that was constructed by Thales Alenia Space, a French-led satellite company.

The second communications satellite was owned by the Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC) and called Express MD2. The satellite was constructed by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Centre.

All Proton rocket launches are currently suspended until this failure has been thoroughly investigated.

Russia is currently responsible for nearly half of space launches around the world, and this is yet another blow to add to the list of recent failures that has unfortunately plagued Russia’s space program.

The same problem with a booster occurred last year when the Express AM-4 satellite failed to reach orbit, at a cost of £170 million.

Express AM-4 drifted in an unintended orbit for a few months until it landed in the Pacific Ocean during a controlled descent.

In addition, the unsuccessful Phobos Grunt mission crash landed on Earth two months its launch in November 2011. The proposed sample return mission to Mars’ moon Phobos suffered problems during the launch phase that left it in a decaying low Earth orbit.

The stranded satellites and booster are now classed as space debris, and will be monitored to track their positions. They currently pose no threat to International Space Station.

ESA Eutelsats W3D To Launch on Soyuz Proton

An International Launch Services (ILS) Proton rocket will launch Eutelsat’s W3D satellite in late 2013 under a contract ILS announced Nov. 9.

The satellite, ordered by Paris-based Eutelsat in late 2010 following the loss of the W3B spacecraft, which failed just hours after launch when it developed a catastrophic leak in its fuel tank — will carry 56 Ku-band transponders and will be operated at Eutelsat’s 7 degrees east longitude orbital slot.

W3D, which like W3B is a Thales Alenia Space Spacebus 4000 model, is expected to weigh 5,400 kilograms at launch, Reston, Va.-based ILS said.

In a separate announcement, Eutelsat said its W3C satellite, launched aboard a Chinese Long March rocket Oct. 7, has entered commercial service at 16 degrees east.

Traffic from three other Eutelsat spacecraft, Eurobird 16, W2M and Sesat 1, have been transferred to W3C.

Eutelsat, whose recent quarterly financial results highlighted the company’s need for more in-orbit capacity to meet demand, is scheduled to launch six satellites between 2012 and 2014, including W3D.

NASA Astronaut Ron Garan's Blog on Descent from ISS in Soyuz Capsule

A NASA Blog by Ron Garan relating a fabulous description of what it's like to descend from the ISS, through the seering heat of Earth's protective atmosphere, in a Soyuz Capsule.

Ron Garan:

About two weeks before my return to Earth, I had a videoconference from the International Space Station with astronaut Scott Kelly who told me about his experience plunging over Niagara Falls in a burning barrel six months before. 

 

He was actually describing what his own ride home from the ISS on a Soyuz spacecraft was like. Now that I’ve taken the same trip, I can tell you that it was as advertised, and more.

Travel Day

I spent undocking day completing a biological study and stowing it onboard the Soyuz for return to Earth, packing cargo, taking some last minute pictures of our beautiful planet from the space station Cupola, and Tweeting pictures I took on my last full day in space. 

 

Following a brief goodbye to Mike Fossum, Satoshi Furukawa and Sergei Volkov, who remain onboard the space station, Sasha, Andrey and I hurried into our Soyuz spacecraft, closed the hatch and started preparing for undocking. 

 

Once the hatch was closed, I put on special garments worn under my spacesuit to help counteract the negative effects of the g-forces we would encounter upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. 

 

Sasha and Andrey also dressed in their spacesuits, and then we all strapped into the same seats we occupied when we launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 5, 2011. Andrey was on the left, Sasha in the middle, and I sat on the right. 

Undocking

As the hooks securing our spacecraft released, springs pushed us slowly away from the space station. As we backed away, I took in my last views of the amazing orbital complex that we called home for five and a half months. I strained for a last glimpse of the outboard edge of the space station’s massive solar arrays through the window next to my seat.

We made a lap and a half around the Earth before the spacecraft fishtailed to point backwards, just as the moon was setting west of South America. Then, moments before passing the southern tip of the continent, I watched an orbital sunrise one last time. We then fired the main engines for about four and a half minutes, enough to slow us down for re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. 

The next big event during our return to Earth was the separation of our Soyuz spacecraft into three separate parts: the orbital compartment, the propulsion compartment and the descent capsule, the only part that would survive the transition through the atmosphere. Separation occurred with a small explosion followed by debris flying everywhere out my window!

 

Read More of this wild ride on Ron Garan's Blog

Soyuz Proton landing video