A Russian Proton rocket carrying an advanced satellite crashed outside of Kazakhstan shortly after lift-off, Russia Today reports.
The unmanned rocket's launch and initial descent looked good, but an unspecified failure during the third stage of flight resulted in a crash, according to NASA Space Flight. In the video, at about 1:50 after lift-off, unusual bursts of flames can be seen shooting out, before it eventually falls.
"Contact with the carrier rocket was lost in the 540th second after liftoff,"Itar-Tass quoted an official with the Russian space agency as saying. "It is known that the nose cone did not separate from the rocket."
Onboard the downed spacecraft was an advanced Express-AM4R satellite, which RT noted was Russia's "most-advanced and powerful satellite."
The Russian space agency later announced both the rocket and its expensive hardware had broken up in the Earth's atmosphere, according to Radio Free Europe.
The satellite was designed to provide television and radio broadcasting, broadband Internet access, multimedia services, telephony, and mobile communications.