Rokot launches will resume in first half of September - Popovkin
MOSCOW. Aug 5 (Interfax-AVN) - The first launch of the carrier rocket Rokot will take place in early September and will take communication spacecraft Gonets into orbit, Roscosmos Director Vladimir Popovkin told reporters on Monday.
Popovkin said the problems detected in the work of the booster used in Rokot launches have now been fixed.
A Rokot carrier rocket carrying the booster Briz-KM and a spacecraft Geo-IK-2 was launched from the cosmodrome Plesetsk in the Arkhangelsk region on February 1, 2011. Two stages of the carrier rocket worked normally. However, an accident occurred on the booster Briz-KM, as a result of which a Geo-IK-2 satellite was taken to a non-calculated elliptical orbit with a minimal altitude of some 370 km and a maximal altitude of some 1,020 km instead of the planned circle orbit with an altitude of 1,000 km.
On July 15, the satellite entered the solid layers of the atmosphere and burned up.