Two Russian officials fired for rocket launch failure

The decision to remove Viktor Remishevsky, deputy chief of Russian Federal Space agency and Vyacheslav Filin, vice president of rocket manufacturing company RSC Energia, was taken after getting the investigation report about the failure on Wednesday.

Two officials fired after investigation
The Russian rocket which was carrying three Glonass-M navigation satellites failed to make it to the orbit, after its launch on Dec. 5th and crashed in the Pacific Ocean.

An investigation was ordered which found that, the rocket was filled up with one or two tons of fuel more than that which was originally planned and this led the boosters going astray.

A statement by Kremlin, which announced the decision to remove the officials, also said that the president has formally reprimanded the chief of country’s space agency ‘Roscosmos’.

The statement said, “Two officials were fired for the errors made in the calculations for refueling the vehicle’s Block DM-3 upper stage.”

The investigations however, cleared the rockets for any other fault and the rocket fleet successfully returned to service with the launch of Ka-Sat, a broadband communication satellite for the Eutelsat.

Glonass satellites to be Russian global navigation satellites
Glonass-M satellites will perform a navigation service for the military and civilian purposes, similar to the U.S. GPS satellites. Each satellite weighs around 3,000 pounds and can stay in the orbit for seven years. The satellites are manufactured by Information Satellite System’s ‘Reshetnev’.

26 Glonass satellites will be positioned in the orbit and will be split into three groups of eight satellites, which will provide global coverage. Two satellites will be stationed as reserves.

The crash is estimated to have cost around 5 billion Roubles to Russia ($160 million) and has delayed the programme by at least six months.

Russian daily ‘Vedomosti’ has reported that the satellites were insured for 5 percent of their cost only.