Russian Proton Failure

Early Saturday morning, the Russian launched Proton rocket failed while placing a DISH network satellite into orbit.

The Proton rocket worked flawlessly until a little over an hour into the flight when the vehicle needed to make a planned orbit change in order to get the payload to an optimal orbit. When the failure occurred, the upper stage was in the process of completing a 34 minute burn. The premature shutdown of the upper stage left the satellite 5,000 miles short of its intended altitude of 17,400 miles.

This incident marks the 2nd Proton in 6 months to fail, leaving parent companies wondering what is wrong with their launch vehicle and having to open an investigation into the cause of the problem.

The satellite owner, SES AMERICOM, must make a decision on what to do bout the errant satellite which was to provide HD television service to the U.S. through DISH Network. Now that the satellite is out of position, there are a few options, either use the fuel on board the satellite to move it into position, use the fuel to de-orbit the satellite, or try a risky lunar assist orbit change.

The lunar assist worked for a previous Proton launch failure, but is tricky and far from guaranteed to work. Using on board fuel to change the orbit of the satellite will likely cause some problems; this would almost certainly use most of the fuel on-board and leave little for in orbit adjustments and severely life limit the satellite. The third option is to use the on-board fuel to degrade the orbit into the atmosphere, most likely this would be chosen for insurance reasons.

If you want to read more on this, check out Space.com