Russia Suspends Use of Rokot Space Rockets
Posted on: Saturday, 8 October 2005, 21:00 CDT
MOSCOW. Oct 8 (Interfax) - Russia has suspended the use of its light class Rokot space launcher rockets before the cause of Saturday's bungled launch of the European Union's CryoSat satellite has been found out definitively, Russian Federal Space Agency spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko told Interfax.
CryoSat was not orbited because the Briz-KM booster stage of the Rokot that took the satellite into space was not activated when commanded to do so.
Alexander Medvedev, head of the Russian Khrunichev space rocket enterprise, which manufactures Rokots, "has already apologized to the foreign customers," Davidenko said.
CryoSat blasted off from the Plesetsk space center in Russia.
Russia planned to launch on December 27 the U.S. Telecommunications satellite Compsat 2 using a Rokot fitted with a Briz-KM, but "this launch may be put off" because of Saturday's incident, a Russian space sector source told Interfax.
Source: Daily News Bulletin; Moscow - English
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