Reports from Russia indicate that the Yamal 201 communications spacecraft owned by Gazprom Space Services has had a major anomaly in orbit and may have completely failed. The event apparently took place on 5 June 2014 when all of its 6 Ku-band and 9 C-band transponders became unavailable for use. Customers on the spacecraft are now being transferred to other satellites in the Gazprom fleet including the Yamal 300K which operates in the same orbital slot over 90 East in the Geostationary arc. While the exact cause of the failure has not been disclosed, the Yamal 201 spacecraft has been beset with anomalies mainly relating to loss of attitude control/telecommand system failure and was due to be replaced with Yamal 401 which is due for launch in September this year. Built by RSC Energia using its Yamal 200 bus design, the Yamal 201 was launched in 2003 and was originally intended to have a 12 year design life.
The spacecraft is believed to be insured but the policy wording may have an exclusion covering failures related to loss of attitude control/failure in the telecommand system.
