There are conflicting reports as to the cause of the failure that downed International Launch Services’ Proton rocket earlier this month.
Russian media is reporting human error to be the most likely reason that the Proton-M rocket crashed on May 16th, destroying its payload, the Mexican Centario/Mexsat-1 satellite.
However, Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin blamed the crash on a historical design flaw in one of the engines. He told the Russian news agency Tass that the incident was similar to one in 2014 when the exact failure was not determined.
He also said the low-level of wages in the Russian space industry was also a factor.
Preliminary flight information indicates that the anomaly occurred during the operation of the third stage, approximately 490 seconds after lift-off.
Investigations have been launched by a Russian State Commission and ILS.
