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Russia loses Mexican satellite after rocket failure

Moscow: Russia's space agency said on Saturday that a rocket carrying a Mexican telecommunications satellite had suffered an "emergency situation" on launch, leading to its loss.
The space agency, Roscosmos, said in a brief statement that a Proton-M rocket carrying a Mexican satellite had suffered a problem on launch.
"An emergency situation took place when the Proton-M rocket launched with a MexSat-1 satellite. The reasons are being identified," Roscosmos space agency said in a statement.
The failure came just hours after a separate glitch in which a Russian Progress spacecraft docked to the ISS failed to switch on its engines on command from mission control in a planned manoeuvre to shift the ISS into a higher orbit.
Russia's space programme has experienced a troubling number of accidents in recent years and the latest incidents expose its failure to resolve problems with workhorse technology.
The latest problems come just two weeks after a supply ship heading to the ISS lost communications and crashed to Earth, prompting delays in the ferrying of astronauts to and from the orbiting station.
The latest satellite failure was yet more bad news for Russia's troubled space industry, which earns millions of dollars from the launches of Western and Asian commercial satellites.
A source in the space agency told RIA Novosti state news agency that the Proton rocket lost communications with the ground about a minute before the satellite was supposed to separate from the third stage rocket.
The satellite failed to separate from the rocket and would be unable to function.
"The Mexican satellite is lost. Launches of rockets of the Proton type will be grounded until the reason is identified," the source added.
The launch took place at 8:47 am Moscow time (0547 GMT) from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Fragments of the carrier rocket, which contained several tons of toxic fuel, fell over Siberia's Chita region, but most likely burnt up in the atmosphere, space industry sources said.
"According to confirmed data, the third state of the Proton-M rocket carrier with the Briz-M upper stage and the Mexican satellite fell on Chita region," a source told Interfax news agency.
"The third stage of the Proton-M with the upper-stage fell from a height of around 160 kilometres. That should be enough for all the fragments to burn up in the atmosphere," another source told TASS news agency.
The Proton-M carrier rocket is Russia's main workhorse used for commercial satellite launches, but in recent years has suffered a litany of failures and has been repeatedly grounded.