The occasional failure is to be expected because spaceflight is so challenging, experts say. And in March, NASA's $424 million Glory climate satellite crashed into the Pacific Ocean after the nose-cone fairing on its Taurus XL rocket failed to open as planned.Īn artist's concept of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft nearing the Martian moon Phobos, something the failed probe never got to do. A Chinese Long March rocket failed to loft an experimental satellite to orbit in August. The other two big setbacks affected China and the United States. "These and other failures point to serious follow-through quality control failures long expected and of concern to Russian space analysts," Charles Vick, a senior technical and policy analyst at, told after the Progress 44 mishap. These problems could point to systemic issues within the Russian spaceflight program, some experts say.
In addition to Phobos-Grunt, three separate satellite launches went bad, and the unmanned Progress 44 supply ship crashed while hauling a bellyful of cargo to the International Space Station. 6 instead of entering into orbit around the hellishly hot planet (Akatsuki launched in May 2010).įive of the recent mission failures were Russian. The picture gets even grimmer if you include Japan's unmanned Akatsuki probe, which sailed past Venus on Dec. Some have sent scientific probes racing toward Jupiter or the moon others have launched satellites or astronauts to Earth orbit.Ĭounting Phobos-Grunt, seven of those 74 missions have suffered major failures. 5, 2010, a total of 74 space missions have lifted off the pad. "The combination of the mechanical challenges of a successful launch and the technological challenges of spacecraft operation make success in space missions one of the hardest of human endeavors to achieve," Logsdon told in an email.