Rocket launch failure caused by faulty software

A government panel has found that the failed launch of a booster rocket that resulted in the loss of a European satellite earlier this month had been caused by a faulty computer program, Russian officials said today.

The CryoSat satellite was lost on October 8 due to the failure of a Russian Rokot booster, dealing a major blow to the European Space Agency, which had hoped to conduct a three-year mapping of Earth’s polar ice caps and provide more reliable data for the study of global warming.

The booster’s failure had been caused by a faulty computer program that had been developed jointly by Russian companies and Ukraine’s Khartron, said Alexei Kuznetsov, a spokesman for Russia’s Space Forces that oversaw the launch.