Posted at 9:35 a.m. PST Sunday, March 12, 2000

Russian sea-launch space rocket fails MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian space launch ended in failure Sunday when the second stage of the Zenit-3 SL rocket failed to fire, sending a Ukrainian payload plunging toward Earth, Russia's mission control said.

A spokesman told Reuters the rocket was fired from a ship at the equator, but the mission was aborted 467 seconds into the flight. A separate launch Sunday of a Proton rocket from Russia's Baikanur space base in Kazakhstan was a success.

The spokesman later said that the rocket was Ukrainian, but that the payload was American.

Interfax news agency said it was a communications satellite belonging to the U.S. firm Hughes (GMH.N).

http://www.sjmercury.com/nation/nationwire/docs/307910l.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 12, 2000