Красная Звезда в четверг (Red Star Thursday)

 PROTON-M Launch Failure Fallout

On Sept 7th, a Proton-M carrying a Japanese COMSAT exploded shortly after launch from the Baikonur (aka Tyuratam) Cosmodrome, located in Kazakhstan.  In doing so, over 200 tons of toxic chemicals were dumped into the atmosphere, primarily a mixture of heptyl and amyl.  The toxicity is well known and, unfortunately have been experienced first hand in other regions.  But that in and of itself isn’t the problem.  Evidently this latest launch failure has spurred the Kazakh Prime Minister to move to close Baikonur.  Doing so would severely impact Russian space launch operations, especially for inserting satellites into lower inclination orbits.  Plestsk, located NW of Moscow in the Arkhangelsk Oblast region would remain available, especially since it is inside Russia proper.  However, it is primarily useful for high-inclination orbits such as the Molniya orbit which tends more for military vice commercial satellite launches.

This latest comes on the heels of a failure of the Dnepr SLV, a derivative of the SS-18 Satan, which failed a minute into the launch back in July of 2006, and follows six other Proton launch failures stretching back to 1999 (though most of those were older Proton-K models).

The reality, however, is that operations will continue at Baikonur.  Kazakhstan will likely get paid off (again) by Russia for environmental damages — 141.8M Tenge ( $1.14M US) was shelled out for the Dnepr crash; after the Kazakh government vents.  Russia can bring too much economic pressure to bear for Kazakhstan to do otherwise.  In the competitive commercial space launch market though, this latest failure certainly can’t help Russia’s competitive position.