Space rockets falling in Archangel Oblast

ATK Newspaper, Archangel, 4 July 1998. Space jets in the tundra flash each time another rocket is launched to outer space. Said Gennadii Danilov, Government Inspector for Nature Conservation, "A Tsiklon-3 carrier was launched from Plesetsk Space-Launch Complex on 16 June 1998. The day before, a group of environmental experts of the Oblast and the launch complex left for Koida District where the booster stage was to fall. The spent stage fall site covers 267,700 hectares of forest-tundra. It has been used for these purposes alongside with normal economic activities since 1967. We did find the place where the booster had fallen. It was estimated that 79 kg of heptyl rocket fuel and 145 kg nitrogen tetraoxide oxidizer together with more than 6 tons of scrap metal had been dumped. This was a violation of Clauses 45 and 55 of Natural Environment Protection Act of Russian Federation, because no permissions to discharge, dump or place pollutants in the site area had been issued. The Launch Complex does not neutralize or recycle spent stages nor measures levels of pollution resulting from discharge of propellants. These facts were stated in the papers handed over to the Launch Complex management."

Note. A Tsiklon-3 type rocket was first launched from Plesetsk on 24 June 1977. The liftoff weight of the three-stage rocket is 188 t. 113 launches were made as of 1 January 1995, of which 108 were successful. In the years that followed, one launch was made annually. The rocket developer and producer is Yuzhmash in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, and the control systems are manufactured in Kharkov, Ukraine.