During the third stage of the launch of a Proton-M booster rocket from Baikonur today there was an emergency situation.
"In the 498th second of the flight there was an emergency engine shutdown in the third stage," a source said. The third stage of the launch vehicle with the upper stage Briz-M and the Mexican communications satellite fell in the Chita region, the source said, Interfax reports.
"It is not known exactly what happened, but the estimated time of separation of the spacecraft from the third stage of the launch vehicle, apparently, did not happen," he told RIA Novosti.
Scheduled for the beginning of June, the next launch of a Proton-M rocket with the British communications satellite Inmarsat-3-5F will be postponed until the reasons of today's emergency rocket launch are found out, it was reported in the space industry.
