2機のロケットが打ち上げ失敗
ロシアのProton-Mと中国の長征。
■FAILURE: Russia’s Ekspress-AM4 is lost as Proton-M Briz-M fails [NASASpaceFlight.com]
A Proton-M rocket, with the fiftieth Briz-M upper stage, launched Russia’s Ekspress-AM4 communications satellite, after an early morning liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. However, having launched at 03:25 Thursday local time (21:25 UTC on Wednesday) - and the Proton-M completing its mission successfully – the Briz-M failed to deploy Ekspress-AM4 into a geosynchronous transfer orbit after it was reported to have lost all power at the time during – or shortly after – the fourth burn.
■China’s third launch in a week proves too much as Long March 2C fails [NASASpaceFlight.com]
The new satellite, ShiJian 11-04 was to be placed in a similar orbit. However, after several hours of confusion and conflicting reports, this satellite has been lost, along with its launch vehicle – as Chinese experts aligned with news that “the rocket fell”.
With official Chinese media reports being tight-lipped – as is usual for China in the event of a problem – the exact cause of the failure is unknown. However, once official, this would be the first time the Long March 2C has failed in its 35 launch career, and only the second Chinese failure since February, 1996.
長征の方はなんだかよく分かってない状況のようですが、Protonは上段のBreeze-Mは燃焼中にトラブルを起こして正常な軌道に投入できなかったようです。同じ日にこんな事が起こるってあるんですね…。
