MOSCOW, August 7 (Itar-Tass) — Many of launches of various spacecraft failed in the past year because there is no united control system, ex-Roscosmos head Anatoly Perminov told Itar-Tass, commenting on the failure of Monday's launch of a Proton rocket with Russian and Indonesian telecommunication satellites.
Roscosmos has abolished the department which was in charge of launch vehicles and upper stages. At present, in the preparation for launches, not all of the needed operations are conducted, he said
Formerly, there was a special department that determined prospects for development and use of rockets and upper stages and exercised comprehensive technical and organizational control over the preparation for launches. At present, when the upper control is broken and responsibility is vague, it is not easy to find who is guilty, he noted.
According to Perminov, to put an end to the series of failures, it is necessary to carry out technical and organizational measures. In most of the cases, the cause of the emergency is a human, but not technical, factor.
The defect that stopped the work of the Briz-M upper stage could be found at the facilities during the preparation for the launch, he believes.
As for the upper stages, all of them (Briz-M, DM. Fregat) are good and reliable products, he said.
The launch vehicle Proton-M with the Briz-M upper stage, which blasted off from Baikonur at 23:31 Moscow time on August 6, was to carry two satellites -- Russian Express-MD-2 and Indonesian Telkom-3 -- to orbits. The failure occurred when the Briz-M head unit with the two satellites was carried to the planned orbit -- after the third starting, the upper stage engine unit worked for only seven seconds instead of planned 18 minutes and five seconds, and the satellites were not put into the planned orbits.