A Soyuz-2.1B carrier rocket [pictured] blasted out of the atmosphere on 5 December with two defence satellite’s in tow, but one did not separate from the upper stage and is now considered lost.
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The Russian Defense Ministry’s press service said that both satellites carried by the rocket were successfully put into targeted orbit.
The Russian Federal Space Agency has reportedly lost contact with a highly advanced satellite that was launched into space over the weekend. “The maneuver could’ve been programmed into the flight assignment of the Volga upper stage before launch in order to reduce space junk after the delivery of the satellite”.
A Russian defense payload built to monitor maritime activity, and possibly track the movements of submarines, is stuck to the upper stage of its rocket after launching Saturday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, multiple Russian news agencies reported.
The new Soyuz 2.1v rocket was on its second-ever space mission, and the sphere was attached to the adaptor that linked the booster and the main satellite together.
NORAD data suggest that Kanopus-ST could fall back to Earth as early as Tuesday (Dec. 8), probably in the Southern Hemisphere, Zak wrote.
The Russian space sector has presented a series of failures in the last months, as the loss of the cargo ship Progress, which was intended, in late April, to deliver supplies to six-person crew of the International Space Station, but it was stranded in a low orbit, falling into the earth on the Pacific Ocean. Russian Federation has lost a number of costly satellites, which it launches commercially for other countries as well as for its own needs.
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A photo of the Soyuz 2.1B launch.
