Russian defense satellite falls over China - U.S. data
MOSCOW. July 16 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's Geo-IK-2 military geodesic satellite left orbit and presumably fell over the Qinghai province of China on Monday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) website said.
The report said the satellite left orbit at approximately 6:27 p.m. on July 15. It entered the atmosphere at 35 degrees North and 93 degrees East.
Interfax-AVN has not obtained an official confirmation of the satellite's fall from the Russian Defense Ministry.
A Rokot rocket with a Briz-KM super stage blasted off from the Plesetsk Space Center in the Arkhangelsk region on February 1, 2011, to put Geo-IK-2 into orbit. Two stages of the rocket worked normally, but the Briz-KM stage failed and the satellite was inserted into the wrong elliptical orbit with the perigee of about 370 kilometers and the apogee of some 1,020 kilometers instead of the designated 1,000-kilometer circular orbit.
A replacement for Geo-IK-2 will be ready for launch in 2014, Information Satellite Systems General Designer and Director Nikolai Testoyedov said earlier.
"Geo-IK-2 is undergoing profound modernization. Hopefully, it will be ready for launch in 2014," Testoyedov told Interfax-AVN.