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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Chinese orbiter fails to enter designated orbit JIUQUAN, Gansu - China's experimental satellite, which was launched by the Long March II-C rocket Thursday, failed to enter the designated orbit due to a rocket malfunction. The rocket carrying the SJ-11-04 orbiter experienced problems during flight after it was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 5:28 pm Beijing Time in Northwest China's Gansu province. Beijing News cited an unnamed military observer as saying the malfunction stopped the rocket from entering a planned altitude. "We don't know when the problem occurred, so it will be hard to find out the cause," the observer said, adding the orbiter may land in China's territory if the malfunction happened at the primary period of the launch and may drop into the Pacific Ocean if the malfunction happened late. The failure, however, won't affect the launch of Tiangong-1, which will be carried by a different rocket Long March II-F, the observer said. Tiangong-1 was designed as a platform that will dock with an unmanned spaceship, Shenzhou VIII, for the country's first space-docking mission later this year. It is the first time the Long March II-C rocket failed a mission, Beijing News said. The specific cause of the failure is being analyzed. Russia loses contact with Europe's biggest communications satellite Russia's space programme suffered a serious setback on Thursday after its space agency lost contact with what was supposed to be Europe's biggest communications satellite shortly after launch. A Russian Proton-M rocket carrying a Inmarsat-4 F3 telecommunications satellite. By Andrew Osborn, Moscow In a blow to national pride, Roskosmos, Russia's equivalent to NASA, said it was trying to locate the Express-AM4 communications satellite that was meant to deliver more modern phone, TV and internet services across the world's largest country. The satellite blast off from the Soviet-era Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in the early hours of Thursday morning atop a Proton-M rocket but appears to have suffered a critical failure when its upper segment was in the process of separating from its earlier booster stages. The giant satellite was insured for the equivalent of about £160 million but its loss is the latest in a string of embarrassing failures and casts a pall over Russia's commercially lucrative satellite launch industry at a time when it is trying to drum up more business. Last December, three costly GLONASS-M navigation satellites missed their orbit and crashed into the ocean amid reports that they were uninsured, while in February a technical failure led to the loss of a strategically important Russian military satellite. Anatoly Perminov, the veteran head of the Russian space agency, lost his job in April as an apparent punishment for the failed launches. Roskosmos, which is now under new management, said it was suspending a satellite launch planned for September until it had discovered what went wrong on Thursday.
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