Russia loses military satellite: reports

[MNeagle]

Moscow (ANTARA News/AFP) - Russia`s top military and space official launched a search Tuesday for a missing military satellite that apparently was put into the wrong orbit shortly after its launch.

The Russian defence ministry confirmed that it had lost sight of the craft -- a dual-use vessel that can draw a three-dimensional map of the Earth and locate the precise positions of various targets.

The incident came just a month after President Dmitry Medvedev sacked two top space officials for a similar setback and delivered another humiliating blow to Russia`s much-maligned space industry.

The seriousness of the situation was underscored late Tuesday by reports that the defence ministry had set up an urgent joint task force with the Russia`s space agency to look for the missing craft.

The Geo-IK-2 satellite was created in Russia to help the military survey land and create a detailed three-dimensional map of the Earth. It was designed to spin in a circular orbit 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) above ground.

But news reports said that the satellite had been put in an an elliptical orbit whose lowest point brought it to within 330 kilometres of Earth.

"We have still not been able to establish contact with the craft, and it looks like most likely, it will be declared lost," a Russian space source told the Interfax-AVN news service.

"The spacecraft will not be able to perform its intended functions at these orbit characteristics," another space official told the news agency.

Reports pointed the initial blame for the failure on the satellite`s Briz-KM upper stage rocket.

The satellite`s launch had already been delayed from December because of technical malfunctions that were detected at its northern Russian launch site in Plesetsk.

Tuesday`s malfunction came less than five weeks after Medvedev fired two top space officials and reprimanded the space agency chief for a launch failure caused Russia to delay the deployment of its own navigation system.

Russia`s Proton-M rocket had on that occasion proven too heavy to reach its initial orbit and had been forced to dump its three high-tech Glonass-M satellites near the Hawaii Islands.

Investigators said that accident was caused by a basic fuel miscalculation that made the craft too heavy to reach its required height.

The three Glonass satellites would have completed a system whose research had been started by the Soviet Union in 1976. (*)

http://www.antaranews.com/en/news/1296600959/russia-loses-military-satellite-reports

[keehah]

Russian Progress space freighter lost (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/science-environment-14653371)
24 August 11 12:07 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

An unmanned freighter launched to the International Space Station (ISS) has been lost.
The Russian space agency said the Progress M-12M cargo ship was not placed in the correct orbit by its rocket and fell back to Earth.
The vessel was carrying three tonnes of supplies for the ISS astronauts.
With the retirement of the US space shuttle, there is now a critical reliance on robotic freighters to keep the station supplied.
But with ample stores currently onboard, the more pressing concern will be the status of the Progress freighter's launch vehicle - the Soyuz-U.
This is very similar to the Soyuz-FG rocket that is used to lift manned capsules to the station.
Until the cause of Wednesday's failure is firmly established, it is unlikely the next astronaut flight to the ISS, due on 22 September, will be allowed to proceed.
In that case, the crew already on the station and preparing to come home would be asked to stay up longer.
"The anomaly has only just occurred; there's quite a bit of work to do to sort through where we're at," said Mike Suffredini, the US space agency's (Nasa) ISS manager. "If things work out and it looks like the Soyuz will be able to fly then we'll let the crew on orbit stay until we do a normal rotation."
The Progress mission was the 44th such cargo delivery flight to the space station.
It lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 13:00 GMT (17:00 Moscow time).
It appears the Soyuz rocket's third and final propulsion stage system shut down early. As a result, the Russian federal space agency (Roskosmos) said, the Progress vessel "was not placed in the correct orbit".
The failure occurred some 320 seconds into the flight. Telemetry to both the rocket and the freighter were lost.
It was the first Progress anomaly in the history of the ISS programme.
Officials reported the ship coming down in Russia's Altai province, some 1,500km northeast of the launch site. A loud explosion was heard in the region and there were reports of windows being blown out, but it is not thought there were any injuries on the ground as a result of wreckage coming out of the sky.
The space station is currently manned by the Expedition 28 crew. This is commanded by Russian Andrey Borisenko. His flight engineers are Satoshi Furukawa (Japan), Mike Fossum (US), Ron Garan (US), Alexander Samokutyaev (Russia), and Sergei Volkov (Russia).
They were informed of the situation by mission control in Moscow shortly after the failure.
The astronauts have plenty of supplies onboard. Last month's shuttle flight delivered sufficient food stores to maintain the ISS crew for a year.
"We're in a good position logistically to withstand this loss," said Mr Suffredini.
"I can tell you we can go several months without re-supply if that becomes necessary."
If Soyuz operations are suspended for a long period, however, it will become necessary at some point - probably in October - to start reducing the size of the crew on the ISS.
There are a number of factors that might prompt the ISS partners to lower the complement. One would be the desire to slow the use of those consumables, such as toilet parts, that are depleted more rapidly and therefore need more regular replenishment. Another would be the safety restrictions that compel homecoming astronauts to use their return capsules by a specified date.
One more would be medical protocols that restrict the time astronauts are allowed to stay on the station to limit their expose to harmful doses of space radiation.
This is the second Russian rocket failure in a week. On 18 August, a Proton vehicle put a telecommunications satellite in the wrong orbit.
In December, another Proton failure resulted in top Russian space agency officials losing their jobs.

[keehah]

Russian craft on Mars mission stuck in orbit (http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre7a62t9-us-russia-mars-phobos/)

MOSCOW, Nov. 9, 2011 (Reuters) — A Russian spacecraft designed to bring back soil samples from one of the moons of Mars veered off course Wednesday after its launch, clouding hopes Russia could pull off its first interplanetary mission in more than two decades.

Russian space agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said an engine failed to fire on the unmanned Phobos-Grunt probe after it reached Earth's orbit, leaving Moscow with just two weeks to fix the problem before a window for reaching Mars closes.

Space officials initially said the $163 million craft had only three days of battery power left, but later said it could remain operational for two weeks. But they worried the 12.5-ton craft could plunge from its low orbit into Earth's atmosphere in days...

[Cebu_4_2]

I have forgot where I parked my car but this would suck much more.

[keehah]

Soyuz rocket falls in Siberia after launch mishap (http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1112/23soyuzmeridian/)
BY STEPHEN CLARK SPACEFLIGHT NOW Posted: December 23, 2011

A Soyuz rocket and a Russian military communications satellite crashed in Siberia on Friday, continuing a pesky series of launch mishaps blemishing Russia's space program in the last year.

Russian rocket failures have lost navigation, research and communications satellites since December 2010. Another Soyuz rocket crashed in August with a Progress resupply craft bound for the International Space Station.

And Russia's Phobos-Grunt Mars probe is stuck in orbit around Earth after its rocket pack floundered shortly after launch in November. The Phobos-Grunt craft, which was designed to return samples from a moon of Mars, will probably fall back to Earth in January.

The mishap Friday occurred about seven minutes after the Soyuz rocket fired away from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia at 1208 GMT (7:08 a.m. EST). The kerosene-fueled rocket pointed southeast from Plesetsk, a military-run launching base in Arkhangelsk oblast.

The problem struck during the rocket's third stage burn, but there were no reliable reports on the cause of the failure by Friday afternoon. "This is a significant failure," said Vladimir Popovkin, head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. "This proves that this area of space industry is in sort of a crisis. I can say, even now, the problem lies in the engine, but to be more certain we need to take a look at the telemetry. I believe that tomorrow we will have results that we'll be able to tell you about."

The Soyuz rocket is currently the only vehicle able to transport crews to the International Space Station, but Friday's doomed mission used a different version of the launcher.

The booster used during Friday's launch flew in the Soyuz 2-1b configuration, which features a modernized digital control system and an RD-0124 third stage engine. The Soyuz-U and Soyuz-FG launchers, which haul supplies and crews to the space station, rely on an older model RD-0110 third stage engine.

It was unclear immediately what impact Friday's failure would have on the Soyuz launch manifest. Another Soyuz was due to haul six Globalstar communications satellites into orbit Dec. 28.

Soyuz rockets are scheduled to launch another Progress cargo craft to the space station in January and the next three-person crew in late March.

The Soyuz rocket fell back to Earth a few minutes after launch Friday, according to reports.

The RIA Novosti news agency reported debris was found in the region of Novosibirsk, the third-largest city in Russia. Novosibirsk is about 1,600 miles southeast of the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.

It was carrying a Meridian communications satellite for the Russian military.

A Fregat upper stage was supposed to boost the Meridian payload into a high-altitude oval-shaped orbit stretching up to 25,000 miles above Earth.

This high-altitude perch, commonly called a Molniya orbit, allows satellites to stay in view of Russian territory for several hours during each circuit around the planet. Satellites in this type of orbit cover polar regions, areas out of reach of many traditional communications spacecraft in equatorial orbits.

The Meridian communications satellite was designed link terrestrial military forces, ground stations, aircraft and ships with command and control centers. The craft launched Friday was the fifth Meridian satellite launched by Russia since 2006.

Built by ISS Reshetnev, a Russian space contractor, the Meridian satellites are replacements for Molniya communications satellites covering high latitude regions of Russia.

The string of Russian rocket failures began in December 2010 with the loss of three Glonass navigation satellites on a Proton rocket. A Rockot vehicle placed a military research craft in the wrong orbit in February, then another Proton upper stage failed during a civil communications launch in August...

[Horn]

The beginning of that reverse curve of back into the dark ages?

[EE_]

They should keep sending junk up, until it's so crowded a chain reaction occures.
Hopefull end this space race, to control the earth with their weapons of spying and mass destruction.
Man is so misguided!