{"id":14093,"date":"2017-12-30T21:56:22","date_gmt":"2017-12-30T13:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/russian-official-blames-nov-28-launch-failure-on-botched-software-programming\/"},"modified":"2017-12-30T21:56:22","modified_gmt":"2017-12-30T13:56:22","slug":"russian-official-blames-nov-28-launch-failure-on-botched-software-programming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/russian-official-blames-nov-28-launch-failure-on-botched-software-programming\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian official blames Nov. 28 launch failure on botched software programming"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifts off Nov. 28 from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia\u2019s Far East. Credit: Roscosmos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A senior Russian politician whose portfolio includes the country\u2019s space program has blamed human error for a Nov. 28 launch failure that led to the destruction of a $45 million weather satellite and 18 secondary payloads, according to multiple news reports.<\/p>\n

The admission Wednesday from Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin on the Rossiya 24 state television channel was reported by Reuters.<\/p>\n

It apparently confirmed suspicions leaked by Russian space officials in the days after the launch failure, which suggested the guidance computer on the Soyuz rocket\u2019s Fregat upper stage was mis-programmed, causing it to begin an unnecessary turn that left it in the wrong orientation for a critical engine burn required to enter orbit.<\/p>\n

Rogozin said the guidance settings were for a launch departing from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Russian space program\u2019s primary launch site, and not the new Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia\u2019s Far East.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rocket was really programmed as if it was taking off from Baikonur,\u201d Rogozin said, according to Reuters. \u201cThey didn\u2019t get the coordinates right.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mishap left Russia\u2019s Meteor M2-1 weather satellite and 18 co-passengers for U.S., Canadian, European and Japanese companies short of their planned orbit, and the spacecraft burned up on re-entry with the Fregat stage over the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

After its separation from a Soyuz-2.1b booster, the Fregat was supposed to deploy the 19 satellites at staggered altitudes after a series of orbital adjustment maneuvers.<\/p>\n

But Russia\u2019s space agency, Roscosmos, published its own account of the failure Wednesday without explicitly attributing the cause to human error.<\/p>\n

Roscosmos said there was a problem in the Fregat\u2019s software algorithms, but that the flight profile for the Nov. 28 was calculated in accordance with established procedures. Without confirming that the Fregat was programmed for a launch from Baikonur, Roscosmos said that officials did not pay \u201csufficient attention \u2026 to the possible causes and consequences\u201d of guidance issues related to a Soyuz\/Fregat launch from Vostochny.<\/p>\n

Officials from Roscosmos and Russian industry responsible for the launch did not properly coordinate their work, the space agency said, further contributing to the accident.<\/p>\n

Roscosmos said in a statement that multiple Russian space officials will be reprimanded for their roles in the launch failure.<\/p>\n

Rogozin took a shot a Roscosmos in a Facebook post, writing that the Russian space agency aims to prove that accidents are not the result of mistakes by management, but \u201cdue to \u2018circumstances.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Roscosmos issued an earlier update Dec. 12 that blamed the mishap on a hidden problem in the Fregat\u2019s guidance algorithms that had not caused a failure on previous missions.<\/p>\n

The doomed Nov. 28 liftoff was the second Soyuz launch from the new spaceport in Russia\u2019s Amur region, and the first from Vostochny with a Fregat upper stage, which flew more than 60 times previously from other launch sites in Russia, Kazakhstan and French Guiana.<\/p>\n

The Roscosmos statement Dec. 12 described a multitude of factors, including the location of the Vostochny launch pad and the azimuth of the Soyuz trajectory to the north from the launch base. A change in some of the parameters, such as the direction of the launch, may have allowed the launch to occur successfully, Roscosmos said.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifts off Nov. 28 from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia\u2019s Far East. Credit: Roscosmos A senior Russian politician whose portfolio includes the country\u2019s space program has blamed human error for a Nov. 28 launch failure that led to the destruction of a $45 million weather satellite and 18 secondary payloads, according to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1832,1763,2645,3079,234,352,1302,3080],"class_list":["post-14093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dmitry-rogozin","tag-fregat","tag-glavkosmos","tag-meteor-m2-1","tag-roscosmos","tag-russia","tag-soyuz","tag-soyuz-2-1b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14093"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}