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Proton M 3rd stage explodes, leaving MexSat-1 unusable


Scotius

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Well, I hope it gets resolved. The guys deserve their money, and another space center wouldn't be a bad thing. Although, I find it a great shame that disputes over Baikonur could not be settled to everyone's satisfaction.

Oh yeah, what will happen to Baikonur eventually. I know Roskosmos owns it till 2050, but when they stop using it what will happen. It's quite a historical site so hopefully it won't be demolished.

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Both countries are going through some political turbulence, making it hard to predict what's going to happen. But the whole reason for building Vostochny is because Russia wasn't certain it could depend on that deal in the first place. Which, like I said, is a shame. But what's worse is that there is no reason to expect Kazakhstan to find a better use for it. Baikonur is pretty terrible place to launch from. USSR had to settle for it, because most of its territory is pretty far from the equator. Anybody else who's actually launching their own stuff has better places to launch from than Baikonur. Russia was basically the only country for which Baikonur made sense.

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The same clause in the lease agreement that nixes Proton in Baikonur in the 2020s applies to all other hypergolic rockets. Together with the impending Zenit retirement, that leaves only Soyuz. I doubt Baikonur could, when in competition with Vostochny and Kourou, attract enough Soyuz launches to stay viable.

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It seems that Russia is reverting back to the 60's in hardware quality.

A couple of failures is no indication of bad hardware quality.

Remember that last Antares failure? Would you say that the USA has returned to the early 60s?

The Proton wasn't nearly as reliable as the R-7 family of launchers, from the 50s and 60s.

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A couple of failures is no indication of bad hardware quality.

Remember that last Antares failure? Would you say that the USA has returned to the early 60s?

The Proton wasn't nearly as reliable as the R-7 family of launchers, from the 50s and 60s.

Welllll : antares did return to the soviet 60's in this case :P

Though, given the failures several refurbished nk-33s had in static fire tests, (both US and russian tests) - it was bound to happen sooner or later.

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More bad news: ISS Orbit Correction Failed – Russian Space Agency Source

Engines of the Progress M-26M cargo spacecraft, which is currently docked to the International Space Station (ISS), did not start on time, and a planned correction of the ISS orbit could not be carried out, a source in the Russian Federal Space Agency said Saturday.

"According to preliminary data, there was no confirmation of the possibility to turn on the engines of the cargo craft. This is a whole procedure preceding the start of the engines themselves. It is possible that the problem is in the control system,†the source told RIA Novosti.

"The Russian Mission Control Center was informed of the fact that the Progress' engines did not start on time by our American colleagues in Houston. The orbit correction was not carried out," the source told RIA Novosti.

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Russian rockets have failed to reach their designated orbits 16 times in the last six years.

I'm surprised somebody would want their payload on a Russian launcher with that track record. Anybody have the video of the Proton that failed do to its guidance system being installed upside-down?

- - - Updated - - -

The space world is falling apart!

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I'm surprised somebody would want their payload on a Russian launcher with that track record. Anybody have the video of the Proton that failed do to its guidance system being installed upside-down?

Well, it's not as if it's all the same people. Soyuz production at Progress is completely unconnected to production of Proton and Rokot and Krunichev, which is not connected to Zenit and Dnepr at Yuzhmash or Strela at NPO Mash. Of all of these, Krunichev has the worst recent record by a good margin.

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Russian rockets have failed to reach their designated orbits 16 times in the last six years.

Do you realize how many failures the USA had in the late 50s/early 60s? More than 16...

And how many total launches have the Russians done since 2009?

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Do you realize how many failures the USA had in the late 50s/early 60s? More than 16...

And how many total launches have the Russians done since 2009?

I wasn't the one who said we have gone back to the late 50s/early 60s, I absolutely don't believe that and I agree with you! I just wanted to point out that Russia is having a bit of trouble in recent times; obviously not as much as it had 40-50 years ago. :)

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I went through and totted up the statistics for all launches since 2009, with resultant % chances for the major players;

Total for 2009-2015

Success/partial failure/failure

Europe (Ariane+Vega) 40/0/0

India 16/0/2

Japan 19/0/0

Iran 4/0/2

PRC 88/1/2

Israel 2/0/0

SK 1/0/2

NK 1/0/2

Russia/CIS (inc. Soyuz from Kourou+Zenit) 195/4/12

US 118/2/3

US success rate=118/123=96% p. failure=1% failure=2%

Rus. success rate=92% p. failure=2% failure=6%

Europe success rate=100%

Japan success rate=100%

PRC success rate=97% p. failure=1% failure=2%

% may not add to 100% due to rounding

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Kryten, where do you find the data for launches?

Not sure about his exact sources, but i like to browse "spaceflight now"

it's a good website.

From his sources, Arianespace looks like the safest choice, by far ! The Ariane series is awesome :D (you may guess my nationality from my enthusiam :P )

I feel sorry for the Russian space program though. Everything is going wrong for them these days...

(Also feel bad for Mexico, who just lost is comms satellite !)

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I pulled it from Wikipedia's '20XX in spaceflight' series of articles, and collated it myself (possibly with a few errors). These particular pages are curated by a few people from the NSF forum, and tend to be trustworthy. I also switched the Soyuz-2.1a launch last week to a failure, as it's now looking clear that the booster was to blame.

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Considering Mexico's poverty rate (better than 45%), people leaving the country looking for work and a better life, drug cartels and political corruption at all levels, I don't think a communications satellite was in their best interest to begin with. IMO, the millions spent could have been put to better use.

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Considering Mexico's poverty rate (better than 45%), people leaving the country looking for work and a better life, drug cartels and political corruption at all levels, I don't think a communications satellite was in their best interest to begin with. IMO, the millions spent could have been put to better use.

Oh please don't start with those BS arguments. I totally disagree with you : do you also think India should not have flown a mission to Mars ? A few millions for a communication satellite are an investment. Communication is an essential factor in a developing country. Meanwhile, this few millions could have fed not even one million homeless guys for a single day... not much of a long term investment.

So do we know why exactly the third stage exploded ?

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So do we know why exactly the third stage exploded ?

It didn't explode. Engines shut down, most likely because flight computer detected a deviation from course, but the investigation in the exact cause is ongoing.

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Yeah, there's no confirmation of an explosion and I think the satellite crashed rather than reached a bad orbit. "Unusable" is only accurate because the satellite is very much unusable, being as it is now burnt pieces of metal in Siberia (assuming a significant portion reached the ground.)

Is there any information on whether the Briz-M tried to compensate?

The Briz-M is a very low thrust stage and probably couldn't insert the satellite into orbit before re-entry, but on the Meridian 2 failure of a Soyuz-2.1a, the upper stage shut down 5 seconds early and the Fregat (equivalent of Briz-M) tried to compensate (but ran dry), leading to unusable orbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_2

While a whole 1 minute short would probably absolutely screw any chances of a partial recovery (since a 5-second early shutdown on the Meridian 2 Soyuz-2.1a led to a total loss of the mission), did the Briz-M attempt to make any compensation?

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