Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, has launched an independent investigation into the cause of Friday’s botched launch of two brand-new European navigation satellites aboard a Soyuz rocket amid fears that the accident will destroy already weak consumer confidence in the country’s space industry. Four years behind schedule, Friday’s launch in Kourou, French Guiana, of the first two fully operational Galileo satellites — the EU’s answer to the U.S. GPS and Russian Glonass satellite navigation systems — was supposed to be a momentous occasion for the European space community. But after initially hailing the launch as a success, flight engineers on the ground noticed that the rocket had delivered the satellites into the wrong orbit. Read more via The Moscow Times
