Calgary Herald

Russian space launch flops

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Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday that this week’s failed space launch has dented the nation’s prestige and that those to blame must be held responsibl­e.

A Proton-m booster rocket launched Monday failed to place two communicat­ions satellites into target orbits, a mishap that followed several other botched launches. An official investigat­ion is underway.

Medvedev said thursday the failure could have been caused by “traditiona­l sloppiness.” He says he will chair a government meeting next week to look into the case and name those responsibl­e for the failure.

Russia’s space program has suffered a series of humiliatin­g failures blamed on manufactur­ing flaws and engineerin­g mistakes. They included the loss of a robotic probe designed to study a moon of Mars that was launched in November and eventually came crashing down in January.

In August 2011, a Soyuz booster rocket similar to those ferrying crews and cargo to the Internatio­nal Space Station failed, raising the prospect of leaving the space outpost unmanned. Russian space officials eventually blamed the crash on an “accidental” manufactur­ing flaw and checked all rockets for similar problems, and the Soyuz launches resumed.

Russia lost three navigation satellites in December 2010, then a military satellite in February 2011 and a telecommun­ications satellite in August of that year.

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