Preparations for launch of Proton with European sat proceed on time.

KOROLYOV, Moscow Region, December 18 (Itar-Tass) -- Preparations for
the launch of a carrier rocket Proton-M with a European satellite Ka-Sat,
scheduled for December 20, is proceeding in compliance with the original
timetable, the deputy head of the federal space agency Roscosmos, Vitaly
Davydov, told a news conference after the successful docking of the Soyuz
spacecraft with the ISS.
"The state commission for the launch of Proton will meet in session
early next week," he said. "The launch scheduled for December 20 has not
been canceled yet."
In turn, the general director of TsNIIMash Gennady Raikunov said that
"there are no objections to the launch vehicle at this stage."
"There are no arguments against preparations, let me emphasize,
against preparations - not the launch," he said.
Rumors of a likely postponement of the launch of Proton-M till next
year emerged after on December 5 a similar rocket failed to put its
payload - three space satellites of the GLONASS system - into the
designated orbit. The satellites were lost and sank in the Pacific Ocean.
Raikunov said that happened because a large excessive amount of oxygen had
been fed into the tank of the upper stage due a mistake in the
mathematical formula.
Earlier, Raikunov told Itar-Tass the main cause of the failed launch
of the Proton-M, according to official conclusions of the joint probe was
"an error by specialists of the space rocket corporation Energia in the
formula of calculating the amount of fuel to be pumped into the new upper
stage DM-3".
"That mistake was present in the design and operational
documentation," he said.
As a source in the space industry previously explained to Itar-Tass,
the design of the new, enhanced upper stage DM-3 allows for filling it
with 30 percent more fuel than its predecessor DM-2. When calculating the
path of each launch experts compute how much fuel is to be fed into the
upper stage to enable it to put the payload into the desired orbit.
When calculating the amount of fuel components for the launch of the
Proton-M that was to put in space three satellites of the GLONASS system,
the experts correctly calculated the percentage of fuel for DM-2, and not
the new DM-3. The personnel strictly followed the instructions to pump in
1.5-2 tonnes more fuel than necessary.
"As a result, the rocket did not have enough energy to put the payload
into the designated orbit," said Raikunov.
The mathematical error was only the first in a string of causes that
led to the incident.
"The incident showed that the complex test program for the new system
(DM-3) is insufficient," said Raikunov. He claimed that poor quality
control by the system management of the SRC Energia allowed the error in
calculations to pass all stages - from design to operation.
In addition, "a groundless decision was made to combine the fuelling
test and the flight test." If the fuelling tests had been carried out at
Baikonur space site before the launch of the rocket (during such tests the
upper stage is filled with fuel and then emptied again), the specialists
would have seen at once that 1.5-2 tonnes of redundant fuel had been
pumped into rocket, and the loss of satellites could have been avoided.
The panel of inquiry also had some critical remarks to address to the
head enterprise responsible for the GLONASS spacecraft - the Reshetnev
design bureau, which failed to monitor all works related to the launch of
its satellites, Raikunov added.
The third stage of the Proton-M rocket with there Glonass-M satellites
was launched on December 5 from Baikonur. It deviated from the calculated
path by eight degrees, the exchange of data with the upper stage was lost,
and the payload (three satellites) fell into the Pacific Ocean 1.5
thousand kilometers northwest of Hawaii, the USA.

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