After a Russian rocket launched Friday, its $275 million telecommunications satellite failed and burned up quickly, prompting the destruction of the booster and its payload, state media said.
The latest in a series of setbacks for Russia's once-pioneering space industry, this was the second time that Proton-M rocket failed for Russia's workhorse in less than a year.
It is also the second time that it had failed to deliver a European satellite intended to provide advanced telecoms and Internet access to remote parts of Russia, after the last one crashed shortly after launch in 2011, Reuters reported.
The rocket was carrying a communications satellite into orbit, CNN reported.
Nine minutes after the Proton-M rocket lifted off in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on Friday, officials on the ground lost contact with it, ITAR-Tass reported, citing an official from Russia's Federal Space Agency.
The engine of the third stage of the Proton-M booster failed on Friday's unmanned mission, Oleg Ostapenko, head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, told Russian news agencies.
About 100 miles into its ascent at the time, the rocket burned up in the atmosphere, the agency reported.
The emergency system was forced to cut off propulsion after the rocket veered off path. However, the precise cause of the incident was unknown, Ostapenko said.
But the agency also said that part of the rocket could be in a "non-intended orbit" and small pieces could fall down to Earth.
Several other commercial projects will be delayed by three to four years due to this mishap.
"It's a heavy blow, of course. And the thing is that our workhorse rocket - our most powerful and the most-used rocket - has such a bad record," Ivan Moiseyev, head of the Russian-based Institute of Space Policy think tank, told Kommersant-FM radio.
Known for its space program, the Russian Federation carried out more than 30 space launches last year, according to a Russian media report.
