Russian Rocket Crashes and Explodes After Takeoff

Russian Rocket Crashes and Explodes After Takeoff

By Phil Plait

SLATE

Posted Tuesday, July 2, 2013, at 1:29 PM

Dramatic still from a video of the crash of a Russian rocket, moments before impact.
Photo from video by The MrSuslov

Early Tuesday morning local time, at 02:38 UTC on July 2, an uncrewed Russian Proton M rocket crashed and exploded just seconds after takeoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a spaceport in Kazakhstan. There’s pretty dramatic footage of it online:

There’s been no official statement about what caused the failure. You can see a suspicious dark plume that appears to come from one of the liquid-fuel motors seconds after launch, but it's not clear if that is causing or was caused by whatever malfunction occurred. The rocket starts to wobble almost immediately after launch, losing stabilization. It pitches over, and the upper section of the rocket comes off, most likely due to aerodynamic stress; that part is not designed to withstand a fierce sideways wind. Moments later, the entire rocket crashes to the ground and explodes.

An even more dramatic video was taken by witnesses nearby:

From the sound delay after impact, I’d estimate they were about 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the site.

The rocket was carrying three navigation satellites called GLONASS, similar to GPS satellites. These were upgrades to the currently operating fleet of satellites that have been in place for a few years now.

I haven’t heard any reports of injuries from the explosion. Also, I’ll note this rocket is scheduled to launch a research module and another robotic arm to the International Space Station later in 2013. It’s not clear how this failure will affect those launches. I’ll update this as I find out more about the cause and ramifications of the malfunction.

Tip o’ the nose cone to BABloggee Doug Troy and David Harland.