On 2 July 2013 at 06:38 MSK (02:38 UTC) Russia attempted to conduct a launch of a Proton-M rocket, equipped with DM-03 booster stage, which was to deliver into orbit three Glonass-M satellites. The rocket was launched from the launch pad No. 24 of the launch complex No. 81 of Baykonur space launch site. Shortly after liftoff, the rocket veered off its trajectory, subsequently exploding and crashing on the ground about 2 km away from the launch pad.
Previous Proton-M launch with Glonass satellites took place in November 2011. The most recent launch of a Glonass satellite took place in April 2013.
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Very sad event.
Looks like a guidance issue to me. It will be interesting to see what the accident investigation discovers. Luckily it doesn’t sound like anyone was seriously injured. Hard to believe the 3 GLONASS satellites were only $200M though – seems cheap!
According to some new reports, it may be a failure of ground equipment, not the rocket itself. A cable interface plate connecting cables from the pad to the rocket disconnected to early, before the engines reached full thrust. This may have resulted in that the guidance system went into an emergency mode and just wanted to get the rocket away from the pad.
That seems highly likely, given the historically high reliability rate of the Proton first (and second) stage. Last first stage failure was at least 30 years ago... 1982 I think.