The Dnepr carrier rocket crashed shortly after liftoff from the Baikonur space center due to a first stage engine shutdown. The wreckage was discovered at 8:05 Moscow time (4:04 a.m. GMT), 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the space center on a steppe, a long distance from any residential buildings.

"Now a commission led by academician Nikolai Anfimov from the Russian Academy of Sciences is studying together with Ukrainian and Belarusian colleagues several versions of the crash," Igor Panarin said. "All of the versions are linked, this way or another, with the work of the rocket's equipment produced at Ukrainian enterprises."

The Dnepr, a civilian version of the heavy R-36M2 Voyevoda (SS-18 Satan) intercontinental ballistic missile, was launched around midnight Wednesday (8 p.m. GMT), and would have orbited 18 Russian and foreign-made mini-satellites.

Panarin said all the surviving instruments and parts of the carrier rocket would be delivered to the producer enterprises so that Ukrainian specialists could give their conclusions. Simultaneously, Russian specialists would also give their conclusions, he said.

Panarin said it had been established by today that the Dnepr carrier rocket had crashed due to a first stage emergency engine shutdown.

Russia has been using converted ballistic missiles to launch satellites into orbit since 1999. The Dnepr, which was seen as a highly reliable carrier rocket, has a lift-off weight of about 250 metric tons and can carry a satellite payload of up to 3.7 tons to orbits at an altitude of 300-900 kilometers (185-560 miles).

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Rocket Science News at Space-Travel.Com

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