Angara launch
An Angara-A5 rocket lifts off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome Dec. 27. Its Persei upper stage malfunctioned, stranding it in an orbit that decayed Jan. 5.

The upper stage of a failed Angara launch harmlessly reentered Jan. 5, capping another setback in the protracted development of that vehicle.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...