The crash of Russia’s Meridian communication satellite late last year was caused by the destruction of one of the Soyuz-2 carrier rocket’s engines, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, Vladimir Popovkin, said on Tuesday.
“An inter-agency commission has concluded that the reason was an early opening of the combustion section of the rocket’s third stage,” Popovkin said during a meeting dedicated to Russia’s space industry development.
As a result, he said, the combustion section has “virtually burned through.”
The Meridian satellite was launched from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia on board the Soyuz-2 carrier rocket on December 23, 2011. The satellite fell to earth just minutes after take-off, marking another blow for Russia’s troubled space industry, which has experienced a number of launch mishaps over the last year.
Meridian-series communication satellites are used for both civilian and military purposes. They are designed to provide communication between vessels, airplanes and coastal stations on the ground, as well as to expand a network of satellite communications in the northern regions of Siberia and the Russian Far East. These satellites are designed to replace the older Molniya-series.
The Soyuz-2 is an upgraded version of the Soyuz rocket, which has been a workhorse of Russia's manned and unmanned space programs since the 1960s.
