Russian Zenit rocket with US satellite fails at launch

A Russian rocket carrying a US-made telecommunications satellite has plunged into the Pacific Ocean shortly after launch.

The Zenit-3SL rocket, which was being operated from a floating pad south of the Hawaiian islands, failed 40 seconds after the lift-off at 06:59 GMT.

The Intelsat-27 satellite was due to be positioned over the Atlantic to provide services to the Americas and Europe.

Officials say no-one was hurt as a result of the incident.

Staff from the Sea Launch company, which organised the launch, direct all missions from a support vessel that sits at a safe distance of about 6.5km uprange of the platform.

The firm said it would establish a review board to determine what went wrong.

It has been dominated for several years by the European Ariane rocket, operated by Arianespace, and the Russian Proton vehicle, which is sold by International Launch Services (although the latter has experienced a number of failures of its own recently).

Once the cause of Friday's loss is identified and any necessary corrective action taken, Sea Launch will need to re-instil confidence in the market that its product is a good one.

The Ukrainian-Russian Zenit-3SL vehicle has a generally good reliability record. A modified version, the Zenit-3SLB, is operated from land, flying out of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.