Russian Rocket Crashes In The Pacific, Carrying U.S. Satellite
Russia's rocket track record isn't looking so good lately. A Russian rocket carrying a U.S. satellite crashed into the Pacific this morning. No one was hurt, thankfully, but this isn't exactly good news for Russian commercial rockets--or the company that organized this launch. It's not clear yet exactly what happened to the Zenit-3SL rocket. It was carrying a telecommunications satellite made by Boeing, Intelsat-27, and the launch was organized by Sea Launch, a company owned by a Russian-led consortium that's headed by another company headquartered in Switzerland. (You can read a semi-vintage 1999 Popular Science article about it here, if you're so inclined.) Sea Launch has been setting up launches since 2011, after returning from Chapter 11 bankruptcy following another crash in 2007. (These flights are expensive, and a crash doesn't yield much return on investment.) The launch was at sea, south of the Hawaiian islands, and operators worked...