Russian satellites fall immediately after launch

A Russian telecommunications satellite exploded and fell only a few minutes after being launched by the Soyuz rocket.

The launch of the Meridian-5 telecom satellite took place at the Plesetsk space airport in northern Russia. Satellite is pushed by Soyuz-2.1b , the latest version in Soyuz rocket type. RIA Novosti quoted Alexei Zolotukhin, a spokesperson for the Russian armed forces, said the satellite fell after launching a few minutes. Satellite fragments were found in an area near the city of Tobolsk in Siberia. But a police source confirmed the debris fell to 4 residential areas in the Novosibirsk region.

Some unnamed Russian officials revealed an incident on the third floor of the missile that caused the accident.

Meridian-5 satellite is designed to provide communication services between ships, airplanes and ground receiving stations.

Vladimir Popovkin, director of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskomos), admitted that the Russian space industry is in crisis. So Roskomos needs new faces to overcome the challenge.

"We must address the current situation and create conditions for young talents to demonstrate their capabilities. Perhaps this is the time of Roskomos reform , " Popovkin said.

Russia has seen a series of failures in satellite launch in the past 13 months. On August 18, a satellite could not fly to its orbit because it could not be separated from the rocket. Earlier a satellite pushed by the Rokot rocket also suffered the same fate on February 1. On December 5 last year, a Proton rocket carrying three positioning satellites fell into the Pacific Ocean.

Roskomos also lost a transport ship in August because it exploded only minutes after being launched by the Soyuz rocket. The Phobos Grunt spacecraft, designed to sample soil on a Mars satellite, is trapped on Earth's orbit because its two engines do not start. Experts predict it will soon fall back to earth.