A rare Dnepr will fly...

An unsuccessful launch of a Russian-Ukrainian launch vehicle was carried out at Baikonur

Immediately 17 spacecraft from Italy, Colombia, the USA and other countries were destroyed due to the unsuccessful launch of the Dnepr launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Among the lost devices is the student microsatellite “Baumanets” of a famous Russian technical university. The news was received especially painfully in Belarus, which lost its first Earth remote sensing spacecraft, BelKA, created by the Russian rocket and space corporation Energia. BelKA is valued at 230 million rubles. President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko came to Baikonur to observe the launch. Roscosmos claims that he “steadfastly accepted the blow of fate.”

“Dnepr” launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome from a mine according to the so-called mortar scheme: a powder charge throws it to a height of approximately 35-40 meters, then the first-stage propulsion engine is turned on. She separated after 86 seconds, and at that moment the engines turned on. The rocket fell 180 km from the cosmodrome, fortunately, without causing casualties or causing damage to the area.

The emergency shutdown of the engines, according to preliminary data, occurred “due to increased rotation angles of the launch vehicle,” explains the state-owned Yuzhnoye Design Bureau. To put it simply, the first stage engine did not complete the required 10 seconds, as a result of which the second stage engine simply did not turn on. The processing and analysis of telemetric information is still underway. By the way, the Dnepr was planned to be launched on June 28, but then a malfunction prevented it.

The Dnepr is nothing more than a modified RS-20V Voevoda strategic intercontinental ballistic missile, better known by its NATO name SS-18 Satan. It was developed in Soviet times at the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau and was produced at the Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant - both are located in Dnepropetrovsk. These two organizations, as well as the Moscow-based Khartron JSC, formed the Russian-Ukrainian space company Kosmotras.

The Prime Minister of Kazakhstan signed a resolution on the creation of a government commission to study the health, environmental and man-made consequences of the fall of the Dnieper. This commission included representatives of almost all Kazakh departments, including environmental protection. So Khartron will have to fork out money. Although Roskomos claims that there are no negative consequences from the rocket fall.

The launch weight of the Dnepr is about 250 tons, length 43.3 meters, diameter 3 meters. It is capable of placing a launch mass of up to 3.7 tons into orbit at an altitude of 300-900 km. This time, the Dnepr had to travel 500 km to orbit. The rocket, they say at Roscosmos, is very reliable, as demonstrated by 160 test launches and six commercial ones. The sixth launch on July 14 with the American Genesis-1 module was successful. The seventh was unsuccessful. At the time of signing the newspaper issue, the rocket had not been found.

Nikolay POROSKOV