Constellations, Launch, New Space and more…
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“Cosmos-3M”
Khrunichev Struggles With Upper Stage Quality

Following the failure of a Proton rocket earlier this month, Khrunichev published figures on its launches and success rate for the past five years to correct what it saw as erroneous information circulating in the media.

The data and analysis below is based on that information. I have added success rate percentages, rewritten Khrunichev’s information to make it more readable, and added my own analysis.

The overall picture is one of a company struggling with quality control on its own upper stages, with the resulting loss of about 10 percent of its launches.

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  • Parabolic Arc
  • August 30, 2012