Flight engineers lost contact with a Russian Proton rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, a failure that calls into question plans to use the same type of rocket to launch a crucial third component of the $60 billion International Space Station.
The Proton-K booster that was to put an Express A-1 communications satellite into orbit slipped out of control at an intermediary orbit, a spokesman for the Khrunichev Space Center said.
It was not immediately clear whether any parts of Proton would crash back on Earth and whether there was still unused fuel on board.
A similar Russian Proton rocket failed at launch from Baikonur on July 5, crashing on a remote village and prompting Kazakh authorities to temporarily ban all launches. They resumed in September.
Proton is scheduled to put in orbit the Russian-built Zvezda service module of the International Space Station. The governmental launch was planned for November but was later postponed until the end of 1999 or early 2000.
Marcia Smith, a space policy analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said the Proton failure will be especially significant if a problem with the second stage again caused the mishap as occurred during the July failure.
"It certainly is not good news for the space station, because thats what the service module Zvezda is going to go up on," Smith said.
The Zvezda module is the component of the space station where crewmembers would live.
"Presumably they have looked more closely at the second stage so its a bit surprising to have a repeat of the July incident if that turns out to be the problem," Smith said.
"Obviously they cant launch service module until they are absolutely sure the Proton works."
The Wednesday launch, at about 9 a.m. EDT, was intended to place the communications satellite into an orbit 22,300 miles above the equator to relay television, radio, voice, data and teleconferencing transmissions over Europe, Asia and Northern Africa.
The Baikonur site, built when Kazakhstan was part of the former Soviet Union, is where most spacecraft are launched for the Russian space program and is the launch site for other vital parts of the International Space Station.
[Reuters contributed to this story.]
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