Russian space agency Roscosmos lost contact with a Soyuz rocket carrying a $ 45 million satellite shortly after its launch in November, but only now has the organization clarified why the artifact has disappeared: they programmed the rocket with wrong coordinates.

Rather than plotting the trajectory from Vostochny's launch center - a new space built on Russian soil - Roscosmos engineers took the spacecraft off with coordinates from elsewhere in central Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

Dimitry Rogozin, the prime minister, revealed the latest human error to a state news channel Rossiya 24. “The rocket was actually programmed as if it were taking off from Baikonur. They didn't get the coordinates right, ”explained Rogozin.

Soyuz rocket carrying Meteor-M 2-1 weather satellite disappeared because it was launched with the wrong coordinates

The Russian government rents the launching center located in the neighboring country and runs an entire city built around it, a legacy of the former Soviet Union. Now that the country has its own launch center, takeoffs from Baikonur are expected to be less frequent.

This, however, is not the first embarrassing human error recently made by the Russian space explanation agency. At the inauguration of Vostochny, Roscosmos struggled to make the first launch from the new location in the presence of President Vladimir Putin. The launch in question was then held the next day.

Loss

In addition to the $ 45 million satellite, the Soyuz rocket still carried 18 other small satellites. They were from scientific and commercial missions from companies and organizations from Russia, Norway, Sweden, the United States, Japan, Canada and Germany, according to Reuters.

In 2015, a Mexican satellite that was being taken into orbit by Roscosmos was destroyed by the explosion of the rocket that was carrying it just minutes after takeoff. In 2016, a $ 273 million Japanese satellite, also carried by Roscosmos, was declared lost after leaving orbit. In these and other cases, the accidents were caused by human error.

Russia misses launch center and loses $ 45 million satellite via TecMundo