By
Anna Edwards
Last updated at 9:39 PM on 26th December 2011
A man and his wife narrowly escaped being crushed by a fragment of a Russian satellite that crashed into his Siberian home in Cosmonaut Street.
In the latest setback for Russia's space programme, a chunk of the Meridian satellite hit the house in the Novosibirsk region of central
Siberia and were found in the Ordynsk district.
The Meridian communications satellite failed to reach orbit Friday due to a failure with its Soyuz rocket, raising new concerns over the Russian space programme which has now lost over half a dozen satellites in the last year.
Crashing back to earth: A small piece of the Meridian satellite plummeted through a man's house Cosmonaut Street
'A sphere was found, around 50 centimetres (20 inches) in diameter, which crashed into the roof of a house in the village of Vagaitsevo' in the Ordynsk district, an official in the local security services told the Interfax news agency, AFP reported.
In an extraordinary irony, the official said that the house was located on Cosmonaut Street, named after the heroic spacemen of the Soviet and Russian space programme.
The owner of the house Andrei Krivoruchenko, who was at home with his wife at the time, said that he heard a huge noise and a crash as the satellite hit his roof.
'I climbed up onto the roof and could not work out what had happened. Then I saw a huge hole in the roof and the metal object,' he told Russian state television.
Blast off: The Russian Soyuz rocket booster lifting off this week to carry three astronauts to the International Space Station. However, the launch today was not successful
There were no reports of casualties while officials said that radiation was within normal limits.
The head of the Ordynsk district, Pavel Ivarovksy, told Interfax that the damage was being examined by specialists and the owner of the property would receive compensation.
The failure of the Soyuz-2.1B rocket to deliver the satellite is a particular worry as it comes from a member of the same family that Russia uses to send multinational manned crews to the International Space Station (ISS).
An unmanned Progress supply ship bound for the ISS crashed into Siberia in August after its launch by a Soyuz, forcing the temporary grounding of the rockets and as well as a complete overhaul of the station's staffing.
Russian space agency Roscosmos said the satellite came down due to third stage rocket failure just seven minutes after the launch.
'This again shows that the (Russian space) industry is in crisis,' admitted Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos, in comments broadcast on state television. 'It is deeply unpleasant.'
Acknowledging that the jobs of the Roscosmos leadership were at risk, he added: 'I think it is possible that the organisational conclusions will be quite severe, right up to including myself.'
He blamed the crisis in the Russian space industry on the departure of specialists who quit in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
'The main problem is the loss of the personnel who should have come into the industry. People left but did not come in. We need to find a way out of this situation and we will concentrate on young people.'
The loss of the Meridian satellite, which can have both military and civilian use, caps a disastrous 12 months for Russia.
Three Glonass navigation system
satellites launched in December last year veered off course and crashed
into the Pacific Ocean, costing Moscow around $160million and setting
back the program to develop a rival to U.S. GPS.
It suffered a further blow when the Progress cargo craft taking supplies
to astronauts aboard the International Space Station broke up in the
atmosphere in August.
The most recent calamity in the Russian space programme was the loss of the $165-million Phobos-Grunt probe for Mars's largest moon, which was launched on November 9 but is stuck in orbit.
Russian officials have warned that Phobos-Grunt is expected to fall back to Earth in January.
Source: http://www.macsecure.com/russian-communications-satellite-crashes-to-earth-after-launch.html
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