Satellite News

Roskosmos said that the latest failure of a Proton rocket (the seventh in five years) was due to excessive vibrations in the engine of the rocket’s third stage.

Inmarsat provided an initial update on the launch schedule for Inmarsat-5 F3 (I-5 F3) following the failure of the preceding Proton Briz M launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 16 May. In related news, Mexico said that its Centenario satellite, which was lost in the crash, was fully insured.

Mexico’s Centenario satellite (aka MexSat-1) was lost in a Proton M launch failure likely caused by the malfunction of the rocket’s third stage.

Successive depressurisation of the oxidiser and fuel tanks of the Soyuz-2.1a rocket’s third stage caused the loss of the cargo vehicle Progress M-27M, the head of the Russian space agency Igor Komarov said. Yet, the story is far from being complete.

The Progress M-27M supply ship disintegrated as it plummeted to Earth on Friday after suffering a failure on its way to the International Space Station.

Attempts to regain control of the unmanned Progress M-27M cargo ship have been unsuccessful, and the mission is now considered lost.

EgyptSat 2, operating in orbit, is under the full control of Egyptian experts, the head of the country’s National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (NARSS), Medhat Mokhtar, was quoted as saying .

Orbital ATK and GenCorp differ slightly over what caused the crash of Orbital’s Antares rocket on 28 October. Both agree that there had been excessive wear in the bearings of the engine provided by GenCorp. But what caused it?