Foton-M No.1

Foton-M No.1 was the first spacecraft of the Foton-M series of Russian microgravity research satellites, and it was lost in a launch failure. It carried 44 experiments prepared for the European Space Agency and other customers, among them the Fluidpac and BIOPAN-4 packages, and was meant to spend 15 days in Earth orbit before returning to land near the Russia-Kazakhstan border. It was launched on 15 October 2002 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome aboard a Soyuz-U rocket. A strap-on booster block started abnormally, its propulsion shut down eight seconds after liftoff and the stack broke apart at about 200 metres, so the satellite never reached space. A young army lieutenant was killed and the launch facilities were badly damaged. Investigators concluded that debris in a hydrogen peroxide pump had most likely starved the turbopumps of lubricant. The Foton-M spacecraft are produced by TsSKB-Progress in Samara, today the Progress Rocket Space Centre.