MOSCOW: A Russian rocket carrying its most advanced communications satellite to date fell back to Earth minutes after lift-off on Friday in the latest blow to the country’s once-proud space industry.

Space officials said the Proton’s control engine failed 545 seconds (just over nine minutes) after its night-time blastoff from the Baikonur space centre Moscow leases in Kazakhstan.

State television showed the carrier and its Express-AM4P satellite burning up in the upper layers of the atmosphere above China.

“We have an emergency situation,” Channel One television showed a Russian flight commentator as saying. “The flight is over.”

Russia’s Roscosmos federal space agency said it had formed a commission “to analyse the telemetric data and discover the reasons for the emergency situation”.

The $205 million satellite — built by Airbus Group’s Astrium corporation — was meant to provide internet access to far-flung Russian regions with poor access to communications.

Astrium said on its website that the Express-AM4P was set to become “the most powerful Russian telecommunications satellite” ever built.

Roscosmos said it was grounding the Proton — a workhorse of Russia’s space industry that earns tens of millions of dollars a year by launching Western and Asian satellites — during the investigation.

Russia sacked its previous Roscosmos chief in October 2013 after less than two years on the job because of a string of failed launches and other embarrassing incidents to the country’s underfunded but historic space industry.

New Roscosmos head Oleg Ostapenko has been charged by President Vladimir Putin with overhauling the entire sector with billions of dollars in extra state funding.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2014