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Proton Failure Sets Back Russian Space Program
 But the Proton M/Block DM-03 that veered off course and destroyed three Russian Glonass M navigation satellites in a fiery explosion near its Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad July 2 comes at a particularly vulnerable moment for Russia's space program, which has suffered a spate of launch vehicle failures in recent years, including five in the past 30 months. GPS is a military system, and later got declassified for civilian operation. As such, GPS provides an encrypted, high-accuracy military signal and an open civilian signal which is free-for-all. GLONASS behaves in pretty much the same way, just much more ineptly. Russia's apparent nosedive in the quality of its space efforts has so far not affected launch vehicles serving the International Space Station (ISS). However, Proton quality control could have implications for Reston, Va.-based International Launch Services (ILS), which annually launches half of the world's largest commercial telecommunications satellites atop the Proton. ILS was formed in 1995 as a private spaceflight partnership between Lockheed Martin (LM), Khrunichev and Energia. In 2006, LM beat a hasty retreat and sold its shares in ILM to Space Transport Inc. In May 2008, Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, a Russian company, acquired all of Space Transport's interest and is now the majority shareholder in ILS. United Launch Alliance (ULA) is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing formed in December 2006. ULA provides launch services using three expendable launch systems -- Delta II, Delta IV and Atlas V. Russia rents the Baikonur Cosmodrome from Kazakhstan for military and commercial satellite launches and for Soyuz missions that ferry astronauts and cosmonauts to and from the ISS. This year, however, the Kazakh government restricted the number of Russia's commercial satellite missions in a dispute over launch debris, which falls into Kazakh territory. Posted by: Squinty 2013-07-07 |
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