Russian rocket fails to orbit two communication satellites

[Swift]

From Laboratory Equipment News

Russia's Roscosmos space agency says the Proton-M rocket was launched just before midnight Monday from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The booster's first stages worked fine, but the upper stage intended to give the final push to the satellites switched off prematurely.

The agency says that the engine's malfunction stranded the Russian Express MD-2 and Indonesia's Telkom-3 satellites in a low orbit where they can't be recovered.

"The satellites can be considered lost," Roscosmos spokeswoman Anna Vedishcheva says on Rossiya television.

[Noclevername]

I hope they get those problems straightened out soon.

[Jerry]

Ouch!.

As always, all space failures are bad for everyone in the industry.

[publiusr]

Some ideas here on the failure:
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/proton_telkom3.html

Looks like problems with the Briz-M
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/briz.html

Some more into and discussion
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/...-ekspress-md2/
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...opic=27791.135

Frankly, I don't know why the folks there don't defect to China--after Phobos, the space folks got bashed--now they are getting abuse from the higher ups again:
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20120809/175091738.html

"I don't know what the cause of the failures is - be it a [faulty] upper stage, mechanical damage, elementary slackness... but this could not be tolerated anymore," a visibly angered Medvedev said.

[publiusr]

More fallout from the failure
http://www.space.com/17155-russia-sp...-failures.html

[mutleyeng]

yes, hmm - well things improve much more quickly when you concentrate on the quality control rather than the witch hunt

[Trebuchet]

At least it wasn't shot down by HAARP, like Phobos Grunt.

[publiusr]

Cough--yeah...About as likely--a return of Energiya? Talk about a rocket that won't die.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...?topic=12705.0
www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?pg=3&id=355341
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/20...a-20---ru.html
www.russianspaceweb.com/energia.html
http://www.buran-energia.com/blog/lang-pref/en/
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_08_27/Ru...e-not-a-dream/
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...?topic=12705.0

On the Russian front
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Ru...Plant_999.html
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...topic=12777.30

[Swift]

Cough--yeah...About as likely--a return of Energiya? Talk about a rocket that won't die.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...?topic=12705.0
www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?pg=3&id=355341
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/20...a-20---ru.html
www.russianspaceweb.com/energia.html
http://www.buran-energia.com/blog/lang-pref/en/
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_08_27/Ru...e-not-a-dream/
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...?topic=12705.0

On the Russian front
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Ru...Plant_999.html
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind...topic=12777.30

publiusr

You been warned before about posting link farms with little or no explanation. I'm not going to check each one, but a link or two with an explanation and/or quote from each is much more useful than a long list of undescribed links. If you do it again, you will be infracted.

[Garrison]

I did check through all the links. The first group were all articles about a possible revival of the Energia rocket and the last two were a story about a new Russian space facility and a forum page about the OPS-4 'mystery'. None of them appear to relate to the topic of the thread.