Satellite News

A privately developed Chinese rocket failed to reach orbit after lifting off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on 27 October.

Members of a Roskosmos commission and investigators have identified those who could be responsible in the damage to one of the sensing devices on board the Soyuz-FG rocket, which could have led to the failed launch of the Soyuz MS-10 manned spacecraft.

Signal failure might have occurred at the moment of separation of the first and second stages of the Soyuz-FG rocket, which triggered the safety system that aborted the launch, according to Sergey Krikalyov, Roskosmos executive director for manned programmes.

The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft carrying Nick Hague of NASA and Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roskosmos was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz-FG at 0840 UTC on 11 October. Shortly after launch, there was an anomaly with a booster and the ascent to orbit was aborted resulting in a ballistic landing of the spacecraft in Kazakhstan.

On 27 May, Apstar 6 suffered a partial power loss owing to a anomaly of the satellite’s south solar array.

Roskosmos said that Angola’s first national telecoms satellite, AngoSat-1, was inoperative and Russia would build another one for launch in 2020.

The Roskosmos Commission set up to investigate the launch failure of a Soyuz-2.1b rocket with Fregat upper stage and carrying Meteor-M and piggyback satellites, which was executed from the Vostochny Spaceport on 28 November 2017, has completed its work.

A Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle with Fregat upper stage that lifted off from the Vostochny cosmodrome apparently failed to deliver its payload, the Meteor-M No.2-1 polar-orbiting weather satellite and 18 small satellites, into orbit.