Russia launched another of their Proton-M rockets on Thursday, with the mission tasked with lofting the Ekspress-AM4R telecommunications satellite into orbit. Launch of the Proton-M rocket took place from Launch Pad 39 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 21:42 GMT. However, an unspecified failure was noted during third stage flight. The rocket and satellite are lost.
As a workhorse, the Proton-M has suffered from its fair share of failures, none more dramatic than the July failure, when the rocket rolled from one side to the other, prior to crashing into the cosmodrome.
The Russian government launch was carrying three satellites for the GLONASS navigation system.
The vehicle then enjoyed several successful launches under its belt since the failure. However, Thursday’s mission appears to have added to the list of
Proton’s failures.
It is not yet known what went wrong, with only the Russian commentator noting an anomoly and cutting the webcast. The vehicle was on to the third stage segment of flight at this point.
The mission was set to send the spacecraft to its transfer orbit via the Upper Stage called the Briz-M, which carries out multiple burns to deploy the satellites into their respective orbits.
The Astrium-built Ekspress-AM4R – which now appears to be lost – had a mass at launch of 5,741 kg. It is based on the Eurostar E3000 platform and was expected to enjoy a service life of 15 years.
The spacecraft sported 30 C-band, 28 Ku-band, 2 Ka-band and 3 L-band transponders and was to provide digital television and radio broadcasting services across Russia, mobile presidential and government communications, multimedia services (telephony, video conferencing, data transmission, Internet access) as well as solutions based on VSAT network technologies.
Couldn't be any American hanky-panky here, right after the Russians rudely told us to get off the ISS and to use our own rockets to get into space?
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