Malfunctioning Russian Upper Stage Explodes, Spreads Orbital Debris
Computer generated image showing the debris cloud around Earth.
The decaying Russian space program continues to cause serious problems for the world:
A Russian Breeze M rocket stage, left with loaded fuel tanks after an August launch failure, exploded in orbit Oct. 16, raising concerns of the U.S. military, NASA and global satellite operators on the lookout for collision threats from hundreds of new space debris fragments.
The Breeze M stage violently disintegrated some time Oct. 16, dispersing debris in an arc around Earth encompassing orbital zones populated by the International Space Station and numerous communications, scientific, and military satellites.
The upper stage launched Aug. 6 on a Proton rocket, and its job was to place Indonesia’s Telkom 3 and Russia’s Express MD2 communications satellites into geostationary orbit 22,000 miles above Earth’s equator.
But the Breeze M failed at the start of the third of four planned engine burns, leaving the vehicle and its payloads well short of their targeted altitude. At the time of the mishap, the Breeze M still had more than half of its hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants in its primary and auxiliary fuel tanks.
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4 responses to “Malfunctioning Russian Upper Stage Explodes, Spreads Orbital Debris”
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Maybe this is a dumb thing to ask, but,
Is it time to put radars in space, to detect the smaller pieces of space debris that can’t be detected from Earth?
I guess that you would have to put radars on satellites to protect particular important orbits, rather than being able to sweep the whole of near Earth space.
It’s not a matter of being based in space, but that radar doesn’t reflect well off objects smaller than the wavelength used…nor are all materials equally reflective.
The “decaying” Russian space program has the highest number of successful orbital launches per year than US and Europe combined, builds a new 21st century spaceport, and currently the only one that is capable of putting men into space.
Jeff:
The focus on quantity has been the major problem with Russia’s space program. Many of the failures it is experiencing can be chalked up to pushing an aging infrastructure and workforce beyond its ability to sustain its traditionally high level of reliability.
http://www.parabolicarc.com…
Oh, that new spaceport you are proud of? It’s looking more like a giant boondoggle. The main plan was to launch Rus-M rockets from there. But, when that rocket was canceled because it was far too similar to Angara, Vostochny became yet another location to launch Soyuz rockets. But, not necessarily a very logical location for that requirement.
http://www.russianspaceweb….
As for your third point, I’m assuming you were aiming your remarks at the lack of U.S. capability. However, you seem to have overlooked China.
Overall, it seems Russia’s priorities have been backward. The nation’s space program has put quantity over quality. It wastefully funded two very similar rockets for years. It is spending a fortune on a new spaceport of limited utility. The government has seriously under-invested in replacing worn out equipment and failed to attract a new generation of aerospace workers. The Kremlin also has allowed corruption and fraud to fester for far too long.
The positive thing is that officials seem to understand what’s wrong and are working on correcting the problems.