BAIKONUR. June 26 (Interfax) - Four Proton carrier rocket launches are planned from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the second half of 2017, a source at the spaceport told Interfax.
"The Proton-M carrier rocket with a Blagovest communications satellite is to blast off in early August in the service of the Russian defense Ministry. After that, tentatively in late August - September, an Amazonas-5 satellite will be put into orbit. And then, in late September - October, an Asiasat-9 [satellite] will follow," the source said.
It is planned to use this class of carrier rocket to place on orbit another Defense Ministry satellite closer to the end of this year.
Proton carrier rockets were grounded on June 9, 2016, after operation problems surfaced in the launch of the Intelsat-31 satellite: the second stage was active for a shorter period than necessary and the second stage engine shut down ahead of time. The launch did not end in an accident only because the flexible modification of the flight plan of the third stage and the Briz-M upper stage, which were able to smoothly inject the spacecraft into orbit.
After a series of delays, launches were planned to resume in late 2016 but a failed launch of a Progress MS-04 resupply ship in December 2016 prompted a review of the launches' schedule and other programs. An additional check of the engines built by the Voronezh Mechanical Plant for Proton rockets pushed the missions back even further, first until February and then until March 2017.
The first rocket of this kind launched after the yearlong pause successfully put the EchoStar-21 satellite into orbit on June 8.
Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center is the manufacturer of Proton-M rockets and Briz-M booster units.