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03/28/2024 09:37:24 am

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Proton-M Rocket finally Lifts Off, Russian Scientists Announce

Proton-M

Russia's Proton-M rocket has finally lifted off after a four-month delay. In May, an AM4R satellite was lost because of a launch failure, Space News reported.

According to scientists, the payload, a Russian communications satellite, cleanly separated from the Proton's upper stage Briz-M and went into its desired orbit.

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They said that this will put the Proton rocket back in rotation for launching commercial telecommunication satellites.

They explained that a failure-review report can be expected later this week.

Scientists are now focusing on four additional Proton launches that they are planning to accomplish before the end of the year.

Since the 1960s, the Proton rocket has been demonstrating the ability to launch at a sustained pace of more than one per month.

However, these past few years, multiple designs of the rocket have resulted in launch failures.

According to previous reports, The International Launch Services (ILS) launched the first ever Proton M Enhanced rocket in 2007 that carried a DirecTV-10 satellite.

It has an efficient first stage engine, updated avionics, lighter fuel tanks and more powerful vernier engines on its Briz-M upper stage.

The rocket also has thinner fuel tank walls in the first stage that causes mass reduction throughout the rocket.

After that, a second launch was made on August 18, 2008 to place the Immarsat 4 F3 satellite into orbit.

Proton-M also helped in lifting the 6.7-ton Viasat-1 into geostationary transfer orbit on October 19, 2011.

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