Russia’s space pride suffered another blow yesterday when a booster rocket failed to place two communications satellites into target orbits, a mishap that came a day after Nasa successfully landed a robotic vehicle on Mars.

Russia’s Roscosmos space agency said the Proton-M rocket was launched just before midnight on Monday from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The booster’s first stages worked fine, but the upper stage intended to give the final push to the satellites switched off prematurely.

The agency said that the engine’s malfunction stranded the Russian Express MD-2 and Indonesia’s Telkom-3 satellites in a low orbit where they can’t be recovered.

A Russian robotic probe designed to study a moon of Mars got stranded in earth orbit after its launch in November and eventually came crashing down in January.

Last August, Russia lost contact with a communications satellite shortly after a Proton-M launch. In 2007, a Proton-M carrying a Japanese communications satellite crashed.

Roscosmos said yesterday that Roscosmos might halt Proton-M launches after an investigation.