Russian solar sail space launch ends in failure

A FUTURISTIC Russian-US project to launch a solar sail space vehicle crashed when the Russian booster rockets failed less than two minutes after lift-off, showering debris over the Arctic Ocean, the Russian space agency said yesterday.

The Cosmos 1 vehicle was intended to show that a so-called solar sail can make a controlled flight, providing a model for inter-stellar flights of the future. Solar sails are envisioned as a potential means for achieving inter-stellar flight in the future, allowing such spacecraft gradually to build up great velocity and cover large distances.

However, the Volna booster rocket failed 83 seconds after its launch from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Arctic Barents Sea last night, the Russian space agency said. Its spokesman, Vyacheslav Davidenko, said "the booster's failure means that the solar sail vehicle was lost."

Several hours before the announcement in Russia, US scientists at the California-based Planetary Society had said they thought they had detected signals from the £2.1 million spacecraft and that it was in orbit.

The signals were picked up late yesterday after an all-day search for the spacecraft, which had suddenly stopped communicating after its launch, the US scientists had said.

"It's good news because we are in orbit very likely in orbit," said Bruce Murray, a co-founder of The Planetary Society, which organised the mission.

Davidenko dismissed the US scientists claims as wishful thinking. "The failure of the first stage engine of the three-stage booster rocket has left no chance for the vehicle to reach orbit."

A Russian government panel will investigate possible reasons for the failure, Davidenko said.

The botched launch of the solar vehicle was the second failure of a Russian booster rocket in just one day. Earlier yesterday, the Molniya-M rocket carrying a military communications satellite failed after its lift-off from a northern launchpad and fell over Siberia.