President Medvedev sacks space officials over satellite loss

The satellites were lost on December 5 when a Proton-M carrier rocket veered off course and crashed in the Pacific Ocean. The rocket was equipped with a DM-3 booster, designed and manufactured by the Energia space corporation.

Medvedev dismissed Energia's chief rocket and space systems designer Vyacheslav Filin and deputy head of Roscosmos Viktor Remishevsky based on a report prepared by a state investigation commission.

The commission concluded that Energia experts miscalculated how much fuel was needed for the DM-3 rocket booster. As a result, the amount of oxidant exceeded the norm by 1-1.5 tons and excessive weight prevented the Proton-M rocket from putting the satellites into their calculated orbit.

In addition, the company's management did not follow all the necessary pre-launch safety procedures and failed to spot the mistake in calculations, the commission reported.

The December 5 launch of the Proton-M carrier rocket was supposed to conclude the formation of Russia's Glonass navigation system, a project similar to the U.S.-made Global ositioning System.

Russia has switched on two reserve Glonass-M satellites in orbit to compensate for the ones that were lost. Roscosmos plans to complete the grouping of 24 operational Glonass satellites by April next year.