Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (Photo : Reuters/Dmitry Astakhov)
A Russian rocket has been installed in a Wiltshire village's private garden. This was a week after Russia lost a Mexican satellite on May 16 after a rocket failure with a manoeuvre that involves the International Space Station.
Rory Sweet bought the Hypersonic Flying Laboratory, also called Kholod, £38,000 ($58864) at auction because, according to him, it was "the coolest thing" he had ever seen.
On May 16, Russia lost a Mexican satellite after a rocket failure with a manoeuvre that involves the International Space Station. The Russian-made Proton-M rocket carrying the Mexican telecommunications satellite was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 11:47 a.m.
Eight minutes after its launching, the rocket crashed in the Chita region of eastern Siberia, The New York Times has learned. According to the Roscosmos space agency in Russia, the Proton-M rocket carrying a Mexican MexSat-1 satellite suffered an engine problem on launch before falling back to Earth and burning up in the atmosphere, Dawn reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was said to have been informed of the satellite failure while Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev reportedly ordered the Russian space agency chief Igor Komarov to determine who was to blame.
The accident occurred at an altitude of 161 kilometres, This is high enough for the rocket to burn up as it plunged back to Earth. According to the Russian space agency, an emergency situation was recorded with the engines of the carrier rocket's third stage.
There were no reported falling non-combusted fragments and injuries or damage on the ground after the accident although the carrier rocket's fragments containing several tonnes of toxic fuel fell back to Earth over Siberia's Chita region.
The Proton-M carrier rocket has earned Russia millions of dollars after being the country's main workhorse employed for Western and Asian satellite launches. However, it has suffered a series of failures and it has been grounded several times in the past few years.
