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.

Earth Orbiting debris starting to impede Space Exploration programs

Japan’s H-2A rocket that blasted off on May 18 sent a Japanese satellite, Shizuku, and a South Korean satellite, Arirang-3, into orbit but it has also left behind space junk, the accumulation of which is starting to create big problems above Earth's atmosphere.

The amount of space debris has steadily increased since its start on Oct. 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to enter Earth orbit.

Now that India and China are testing space systems, the "garbage problem" could rise at an explosive rate.

Countries are now trying to figure out ways to take care of the problem, but progress has been slow.

"We know that it will eventually impede the development of space, but if we just leave space debris out there anyway, then some day we won't be able to go into space anymore and our development there will hit a brick wall," said Seishiro Kibe, director of the Innovative Technology Research Center of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

An estimated 22,000 pieces of debris with a diameter of 10 centimeters or more are floating around in space. Information, such as orbital path, size and origin, is known for about 16,000 of them.

There are also about 1,000 satellites in operation. The continued accumulation of space debris could interfere with the satellites' orbital paths, leaving them nowhere to operate.

Debris has always been a part of space development and will continue to be so but nations participating in space programs need to take responsibility for the disposal of there waste products, just as on Earth.

Read more of this article here: Space debris - AJW by The Asahi Shimbun