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Zenit rocket failure caused by Ukraine-made parts: report

26 February 2013 19:36 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The faulty launch of Russia's Zenit carrier rocket was due to malfunction of the rocket's parts made in Ukraine, a high-ranking Russian official said Tuesday, APA reports.

"The report submitted (to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Feb. 15 ) concludes that the accident was caused by the defect units made in Ukraine," deputy head of the government's military-industrial commission Ivan Kharchenko told reporters.

On Feb. 1 the launch of the Zenit-3SL rocket with Intelsat-27 communication satellite was aborted 150 seconds after the blast- off. The rocket launched from the Odyssey sea platform fell into the Pacific as it lost control.

This was the first launch in 2013 and the third failure out of 35 launches conducted in the frames of the Sea Launch program.

Zenit-3SL rocket is produced in the Yuzhnoye designing bureau in Ukraine and its DM-SL booster is made in Russia's Energy Rocket- Space Corporation.

Founded in 1995, the Sea Launch consortium was made up of four companies from Norway, Russia, Ukraine and the United States, with the Russian company holding 95 percent of the shares.