ASTANA, August 1, (RIA Novosti) - Kazakhstan has banned launches of Russian Dnepr carrier rockets from its Baikonur space center following a crash on July 27, the head of a Kazakh governmental commission investigating the accident said Tuesday.
A Dnepr carrier rocket carrying a large payload of satellites crashed four days ago shortly after liftoff from the Baikonur space center, which Russia rents from the Central Asian country, due to a first stage engine shutdown.
"Under Point 5 of the 1999 Russia-Kazakhstan agreement on joint actions in the event of accidents at the Baikonur space center, all launches of rocket carriers that crashed are halted," the Kazakh official said.
Igor Panarin, the Federal Space Agency's press secretary, said the agency would pay environmental damage inflicted on Kazakhstan as envisaged in international norms and bilateral agreements.
He said analysis of the environmental situation at the site showed that maximum permissible concentration of noxious substances was only exceeded within a 50-150 meter radius around the crash site. Panarin said earlier that a crater at the site of the crash proved that spontaneous ignition had occurred and that combustion products were low toxic.
Russian and Kazakh experts are developing measures to alleviate pollution effects.
The Dnepr's wreckage was discovered on Thursday, 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the space center on a steppe, a long distance from any residential buildings. Kazakh officials said there had been no casualties or environmental damage from the accident.
The carrier rocket, a civilian version of the heavy R-36M2 Voyevoda (SS-18 Satan) intercontinental ballistic missile, was launched around midnight Wednesday (8 p.m. GMT), and would have orbited 18 Russian and foreign-made mini-satellites.
