Roscosmos to inspect Energia Corporation, assess director's performance - newspaper
MOSCOW. March 1 (Interfax) - Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has ordered the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) to conduct an inspection of the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, the Kommersant newspaper reported on Friday, citing a source in the government's executive office.
"The results of this check are expected to provide an answer to the question about the advisability of the state's participation in the Sea Launch project. The instruction contains a special point concerning this matter. The situation surrounding the project's financing is very acute," the source said.
The inspection results should be ready by the second half of March, he said.
During Rogozin's visit to the Energia headquarters in mid-January, the corporation's general director Vitaly Lopota proposed acquiring full control over the Sea Launch project, the newspaper said. Energia owns a 95% stake in the reorganized Sea Launch company, which currently holds obligations worth some $500 million.
However, Kommersant's sources insist that the inspection was ordered in response to the recent failed launch of a Russian-Ukrainian Zenit-3SL rocket carrying the Intelsat-27 satellite, which fell back into the Pacific Ocean shortly after takeoff from the Odyssey platform on February 1.
Even after a malfunction of the first-stage onboard power source, developed by Ukraine's Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, was blamed for the accident, questions to the Energia Corporation remain, the newspaper said.
Roscosmos and the government's Military-Industrial Commission will soon assess Lopota's performance and decide whether he is fit for the job, it said.
In an interview with Kommersant, a source in the Federal Agency for State Property Management (Rosimushchestvo) confirmed the existence of this instruction, which he said was included in the Military-Industrial Commission's resolution dated February 6.