Russian Military Successfully Test-Launches Topol ICBM
Russian Military Successfully Test-Launches Topol ICBM
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The Russian military successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in a test of its performance under an extended service-life, the Interfax news agency reported.
The RS-12M Topol missile was launched from a facility at Plesetsk, in northern Russia, and hit its target on a military testing ground in Kazakhstan, Interfax quoted Strategic Missile Forces spokesman Col. Alexander Vovk as saying.
The RS-12M, known in the West as the SS-25, dates back to the Soviet era. Vovk said the launch was meant “to confirm the flight characteristics of the missile under an extended service-life,†the agency reported.
The head of the Strategic Missile Forces, Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, said earlier this year that Soviet nuclear missiles would continue to form the core of the nation’s strategic forces for at least another decade.
The test followed a series of failures in unmanned Russian rocket launches.
The European Space Agency’s CryoSat satellite was lost on Oct. 8 due to the failure of a Russian Rokot booster. Also last month, space experts failed to recover an experimental space vehicle after its return, engineers lost contact with an earlier launched Russian Earth-monitoring satellite and a new optical research satellite was lost, the Associated Press reported.
On Monday, the ESA said it had lost contact with SSETI Express, a student-designed satellite launched from Plesetsk last week atop the same Russian booster that carried the lost Russian optical research satellite. Analysis indicated a failure in the electrical system on the spacecraft was preventing the batteries from charging, resulting in a shutdown of the satellite, the ESA said.
