Post date: Dec 06, 2010 1:28:10 PM
Three Russian satellites crash into the Pacific Ocean after a failed launch in a setback to a Kremlin project designed as a rival to the widely used U.S. navigation GPS system.
BAIKONUR, KAZAKHSTAN (DECEMBER 5, 2010) ROSKOSMOS - Russian news agencies reported that the satellites went off course and crashed near Hawaii after blasting off from Russia's Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan on Sunday (Dec. 5).
A spokesman at the space agency Roscosmos said the satellites had deviated from their planned course after a Proton-M rocket launcher malfunctioned.
Interfax news agency quoted an aerospace industry source as saying that the carrier veered from course, bringing the upper part of the rocket with the satellites into an incomplete orbit and causing them to fall back into the atmosphere.
The satellites were the last of the batch of 24 satellites at the heart of Russia's GLONASS, its answer to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS).
Russia has been developing the system since 1976. The state has spent $2 billion in the last 10 years on the project, and the system is expected to be fully operational by end of January 2011.