Yahoo – AFP,
16 May 2014
A Russian
Proton rocket carrying a European-built satellite fell back to Earth on Friday
shortly after liftoff in the latest accident to hit the country's once-proud
space industry.
Russian
space officials said the rocket's control engine failed 545 seconds after it
took off from the Baikonur space centre that Moscow leases in Kazakhstan.
State
television showed the rocket and its Express-AM4P communication satellite
reported to be worth $29 billion (21 million euros) burning up in the upper
layers of the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean.
"We
have an emergency situation," Channel One television showed a Russian
flight commentator as saying.
"The
flight is over," the commentator said.
Russia's
Roscosmos federal space agency said it had formed a special commission "to
analyse the telemetric data and discover the reasons for the emergency
situation."
Channel One
said the satellite -- built for Russia by Airbus Group's Astrium corporation --
was meant to provide Internet access to far-flung Russian territories with poor
access to communication.
Russia sacked
its previous Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin in October 2013 after less than
two years on the job because of a string of failed launches and other
embarrassing incidents to the country's underfunded but fiercely proud space
industry.
New
Roscosmos head Oleg Ostapenko has been charged by President Vladimir Putin to
overhaul the entire sector with billions of dollars in extra state funding.
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