The Russian government has formed an investigative committee to review the 5 December launch failure of a Proton rocket that ultimately destroyed three navigational satellites.
The board, made up of representatives from the Ministry of Defense; the Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos; and the Russian space industry, will attempt to determine the cause of the rocket failure that will ultimately cost billions of roubles and set the GLONASS programme - or Global Navigation System, Moscow's answer to the US-built Global Positioning System (GPS) - back by at least six months. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has also ordered an audit of the entire $2 billion programme.
A programming error reportedly caused the Russian Proton-M booster rocket carrying the three Glonass-M units to veer off course following liftoff from Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan.
"As a result of the failure, Glonass-M cluster was injected into non-targeted orbit," says Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. The move sent the rocket into the Pacific Ocean about 1,609km (1,000mi) northwest of Hawaii.
Begun during the Soviet era, GLONASS-M has 21 satellites on orbit; a successful launch would have completed the 24-satellite constellation. The 2008 war with Georgia renewed the Russian government's interest in updating the M-class constellation and pushing forward with the reduced-weight, next-generation GLONASS-K.
Source: Flight International
