Roscosmos 2011 Highlights

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• published: 31 Dec 2011
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The Year of Space, as the Russian government hailed the coming of 2011, ended up to be the most disastrous 12 months for the Russian space industry in the post-Soviet era. A total of four missions which left their launch pads during 2011 either never made it into space (Progress M-12M, Meridian No. 5) or ended up in wrong orbits (Geo-IK-2, Ekspress-AM4). To top it off, Russia's loudly advertised return to planetary exploration after a 15-year hiatus ended in a high-profile fiasco, when the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft got stranded in low Earth orbit almost immediately after its launch on November 9. However all these failures coincided with an extremely hectic launch rate, almost matching that of two other leading space nations -- US and China -- combined! Despite setbacks, Russia has succeeded in bolstering or reviving space capabilities that the nation had lacked for many years, including the launch of a major astrophysics observatory -- Spektr-R; the return to geostationary orbit with a weather satellite Elektro-L; the re-introduction of a data-relay network with Luch-5A and the beginning of flight testing of an upgraded navigation satellite -- GLONASS-K. Last but not least, the Soyuz rocket received a brand-new launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, which increased the capabilities of the veteran launch vehicle family in delivering commercial payloads into space.