Russia denies space program in 'crisis'

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MOSCOW, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- Russia's space industry is not in crisis despite some local problems and failed launches, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Friday.

"There is no systemic crisis in the Russian space industry; we have problems with some firms, in some sectors," Rogozin, whose duties include oversight of the country's military-industrial complex, told RIA Novosti.

The government's military-industrial commission and the Federal Space Agency Roscosmos are working to eliminate problems, he said, following a number of unsuccessful space launches recently that saw the loss of several commercial satellites and the Phobos-Grunt Mars mission.

In August a Proton-M rocket carrier with a Briz-M booster failed to take two satellites into orbit, and Phobos-Grunt, Russia's most ambitious planetary mission in decades, launched last November but fell back to Earth following a propulsion failure.