On August 15, 2012, the Russian media announced the following news: “The head of the space research and production center. Khrunichev, Vladimir Nesterov resigned. What made a person leave such a high post?
Vladimir Nesterov, who has held the post of head of the center since 2005, wrote a statement addressed to the President of the Russian Federation, indicating the reason for his dismissal - "of his own free will." But is it really so?
It is known that recently the "space industry" has suffered some setbacks. For example, in 2010, three satellites were drowned in the Pacific Ocean at once, in February 2011 the GEO-IK spacecraft was launched into an off-design orbit due to problems in the operation of the Breeze-KM upper stage. On August 18 of the same year, the rocket was unable to launch another satellite into near-earth orbit. In short, 2011 was rich in setbacks.
And on August 6, 2012, the Proton-M rocket was unable to launch the Express-MD2 and Telecom-3 space communication satellites into a transfer orbit. The problem was the operation of the upper stage, which, instead of the promised eighteen minutes, only worked for seven seconds. At the moment, communication is supported only with one of the launched satellites - Telecom-3.
Following these incidents, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev held a meeting dedicated to the problems of the Russian rocket and space industry. At the meeting, Dmitry Anatolyevich raised the issue of solving problems with the work of Roscosmos and wished to find out who was responsible for the disruptions in the launch of satellites. The main problem, according to the Prime Minister, is the lack of young personnel, as well as the general degradation of the “human factor”.
According to experts, Vladimir Nesterov made a very sensible step. By his dismissal, he thereby took the blame for the failure of projects. Thus, he averted the threat from other people and stopped the search for the guilty.
However, Nesterov is not entirely written off from the center's accounts as a valuable employee. According to Interfax, he was appointed to the post of general designer.
