Investigators have blamed the recent loss of three Glonass-M satellites in space on a series of mistakes made by the Russian Energia rocket corporation, final results of a probe into the incident have showed.
"It was established that the fueling of the booster by an excess of 1.5-2 tons of oxidant made the Proton carrier rocket deviate from its course, which resulted in the satellites being put into a wrong orbit and subsequently falling into the Pacific Ocean," Gennady Raikunov, the head of the commission probing the incident, said.
The December 5 launch of the Proton-M carrier rocket was supposed to conclude the forming of Russia's Glonass navigation system, a project is similar to GPS in the United States.
Russia has switched on two reserve Glonass-M satellites in orbit to compensate for the ones that were lost.
MISSION CONTROL, December 18 (RIA Novosti)
