More Problems with Plesetsk?

Another possible Plesetsk failure today (110/8/05),
of a Rockot/Briz KM carrying ESA's Cryosat, although
this has not been confirmed yet. ITAR TASS had this
report, which said,

"A command to separate the second stage of the carrier
rocket didn't get through at the 6th minute of the flight
and communication with the probe wasn't established at
the designated time," Alexander Bobrenyov, the press
secretary of the Khrunichev center, said".

We had talked about the elevated space launch
failure rate at Plestesk earlier this year. If
this is a failure, half of the launches from the
Northern Cosmodrome would have failed so far this
year.

Here's my earlier post from June, 2005 about
this:

"http://groups.google.com/group/sci.space.policy/msg/b0ca889fde4610a6?dmode=source&hl=en"


The June 21, 2005 Molniya-M launch vehicle failure
(which was the first Molniya-M failure in 15 years
after 52 consecutive successes) is the fifth failed
space launch in 35 attempts from Plesetsk in Russia
since 1999, exclusive. This includes two failures
by the usually-reliable R-7 types. No other launch
site in the world has suffered more than two failures
during the same time frame.


Are they doing something wrong at the Northern
Cosmodrome?


Launch Results 2000-2005(6/21)
(Sites with more than 10 Launches)
Site Launches(Failures)
-----------------------------
Baikonur 99(1)
Canaveral 66(1)
Kourou 40(2)
Plesetsk 35(5)
Vandenberg 28(1)
KSC 17(1)
Sea Launch 14(2)
Xi Chang 11(0)
-----------------------------



- Ed Kyle