Russia has lost control over a satellite designed to monitor weather and the Earth's surface, Roskosmos space agency said on Wednesday, reporting the second satellite problem this month.
A rocket launcher built by Russia's state space research and production center, Khrunichev, also failed to put a $165-million European Space Agency Cryosat satellite into orbit.
"This is already a second major failure for Khrunichev," Roskosmos said in a statement on its website.
Roskosmos said the Monitor-E, developed by Khrunichev and launched in August, had failed due to problems during its manufacture and operation in orbit. Khrunichev was not immediately available for comment.
Russia's lucrative commercial space launch industry, a spin-off from its nuclear weapons program, is responsible for putting a large proportion of the world's satellites in orbit.
The Rokot launch system — a converted inter-continental ballistic missile — failure caused the Cryosat to crash into the Arctic Ocean.
The Cryosat is designed to measure how fast the polar ice caps are melting.