Russia denies space program in 'crisis'

Russia's space industry is not in crisis despite some local problems and failed launches, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Friday. "There is no systemic crisis in the Russian space industry; we have problems with some firms, in some sectors," Rogozin, whose duties include oversight of the country's military-industrial complex, told RIA Novosti. The government's military-industrial commission and the Federal Space Agency Roscosmos are working to eliminate problems, he said, following a number of unsuccessful space launches recently that saw the loss of several commercial satellites and the Phobos-Grunt Mars mission. In August a Proton-M rocket carrier with a Briz-M booster failed to take two satellites into orbit, and Phobos-Grunt, Russia's most ambitious planetary mission in decades, launched last November but fell back to Earth following a propulsion failure.