MOSCOW -- A Tsiklon (Cyclone) 3 light booster failed Wednesday in its attempt to carry six Russian satellites into Earth orbit.
An unspecified failure in the rocket's third stage is apparently to blame.
Liftoff from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome located in the northern Russia was at 1:57 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (18:57 GMT), but without the thrust of the third stage the satellites reportedly fell to Earth, crashing on Russian territory near Vrangel Island.
The spacecraft were to be used by the Russian Ministry of Defense and Rosaviakosmos, the Russian Aviation and Space Agency.
The Tsiklon 3 booster -- the U.S. Library of Congress designation is F-2, while the Department of Defence designation is SL-14 -- was developed in 1970 by the Mikhail Yangel design bureau in Ukraine.
Tsiklon 3 is a modification of the 8K68 (SS-9 Mod 2) ICBM with an S5M third stage. In comparison with the Tsiklon 2, the launch vehicle has an increased payload capacity of four tons. It was also upgraded for completely automated launch operations and its orbital injection accuracy has been increased.
The booster's total mass is 189.000 kilograms. Its core diameter is 3 meters and total length is 39.3 meters. It can deliver up to 3,600 kilograms to a 200 kilometer orbit at 74.0 degrees orbital inclination. Its launch price is reported to be $15 million in 1994 dollars.
Tsiklon 3's inaugural launch took place in June 1977, with the most recent taking place in June 1998. During the past 21 years of its operation it was launched 118 times, 113 of them successfully until Wednesday's failure.Tsiklon 3 was also used for launch of the AUOS scientific and Okean-O radar satellites. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, it became inappropriate to use this booster for Russian national security payloads since its manufacturer ended up in a different country, namely Ukraine.
Existing stocks of the booster were used, but no new ones were built thereafter. In 1998 the launch team at Baikonur was disbanded and only four boosters remain available, including the one launched and lost on Wednesday.
Missile test
Meanwhile, a Russian nuclear submarine on Wednesday test launched an unarmed missile and successfully hit its target at the Kuru proving ground in the Russian Far East, according to Russian Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo.
The submarine involved was the Novomoskovsk, which is part of the Russian Northern Fleet.
The same boat in 1998 hosted the world's first civil space launch of a satellite to low Earth orbit using a rocket launched from underwater.
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