"The unmanned rocket fell 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) from the Baikonur launch site after an emergency shutdown of its engines 17 seconds into its flight, the space agency Roscosmos said on its website. A cloud of poisonous gas from spilled rocket fuel enveloped the crash site, Interfax said. Russia has squandered billions of rubles as incidents in the space industry resulted in 10 lost satellites and seven failed launches during a period of 18 months, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in August. The disaster is the latest mishap for the country, which controls 40 per cent of the market for space launches and plans to allocate 2.1 trillion rubles ($64 billion) on its space program in 2013-2020." smh.au/technology/sci-tech/russian-rocket-with-navigation-satellites-worth-144-million-crashes-in-kazakhstan-20130702-2paf5.html
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 04:37:37 +0000