Russia’s space agency says Fregat fall due to software issue

The fall of the Fregat upper stage and 19 satellites into the Atlantic Ocean was caused by “incorrect operation of software algorithms in combination with unaccounted peculiarities of azimuths of the launch from the new Vostochny Cosmodrome,” Sputnik quoted first deputy chief of Russian state space corporation Roscosmos Aleksandr Ivanov as saying Tuesday. The Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Fregat upper stage and 19 satellites blasted off from Vostochny on November 28. It reached intermediate orbit in a normal mode, but Roscosmos later said that contact could not be established with the Meteor-M satellite No. 2-1, which was to separate first, since the apparatus was not in the target orbit. The fall of the upper stage and satellites into the ocean was later confirmed.