By Yuri Karash Moscow Contributing Correspondent posted: 03:15 pm ET 04 December 2000

MOSCOW -- Russian investigators looking into the November 28 failure of a Cosmos 3M booster do not think the rocket was at fault, according to an official with the Russian State Interdepartmental Commission.

Instead, they suggest a computer error inside the satellite may have caused the U.S.-built spacecraft to unfurl its electricity generating solar arrays while the rocket was still climbing through the atmosphere.

Initial reports had blamed a failure of the Comos 3M rocket's second stage for not placing the satellite into orbit.

"If the failure was caused by an absence of a second burn of the second stage, we would have noticed the anomaly during the first burn of this stage already," a member of the commission said in an interview with the Russian Kommersant newspaper, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Cosmos 3M rocket is a version of a former Soviet-era nuclear missile now modified to serve as a small commercial space launcher from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia. Marketed in the West by United Start Corp. of Huntsville, Alabama, the Cosmos hardware has a success record of 238 out of 240 launches since 1986 for a 99.2-percent success rate.

A computer error may have resulted from a hold in the launch, which was delayed one-hour because a Norwegian tracking station was not ready to monitor the satellite. Russian officials propose someone forgot to reset the satellite computer to account for the new launch time.

As result, according to the theory, the spacecraft's flight command sequence began at the original launch time and, following its preprogrammed time line, attempted to deploy the satellite's solar panels while it was still attached to the rocket during the early phase of the flight.

If this happened, it would have resulted in the destruction of the satellite and possibly the loss of the rocket.

Data that may help clear this up has not yet been provided to Russian officials, the commission source said.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/launches/quickbird_update_001204.html

-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), December 04, 2000