Russia: Derailed satellites no threat to ISS

MOSCOW - The two satellites that failed to reach the designed orbits posed no threat to the International Space Station (ISS), the Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday.

Experts from the Russian Air and Space Defense Troops are closely monitoring the Telkom 3 and Express MD2 telecommunications satellites that didn't enter their orbits on August 7, Interfax news agency quoted Defense Ministry spokesman Alexei Zolotukhin as saying.

"Currently these satellites pose no threat to the International Space Station and space vehicles of the Russian orbit group," ?Zolotukhin said.

Experts received information on changes of the space vehicle's orbits from the Russian space control system, the spokesman said, adding that they were analyzing data and adjusting forecast of possible approaches of dangerous objects to the ISS.

Russia on Monday night launched Telkom 3 and Express MD2 aboard the Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.

The carrier rocket failed to orbit the two satellites on Tuesday due to problems in the rocket's boost stage, federal space agency Roscosmos said.

Preliminary information showed the Briz-M booster only had fired its engines for only seven seconds rather than the scheduled 18 minutes and 5 seconds.

Due to the failure, all launches of the Proton-M rocket were temporarily suspended pending the end of investigations.

This was the 6th launch of the Proton rocket in 2012, and the 378th in its flight history. It was Russia's first launch failure this year. In the past two years, the country has suffered five launch failures.