Engine Failure Scuppers Solar Sail

Hopes were fading today that a privately-funded Russian/US mission to launch an experimental solar sail spacecraft into orbit could be salvaged.

Russia's space agency said the mission had failed after a booster rocket on Cosmos 1 had suffered engine failure 83 seconds after it was launched last night from a Russian submarine under the Barents Sea.

There was no immediate comment on this from US scientists, who several hours earlier had given a more optimistic view of the problems of the project, which has been put together on a shoestring £2m budget.

Speaking before the report from the Russians, US scientists had told the media in Pasadena, California, that they thought they had received signals from the craft and that it might be in orbit, although they conceded they did not know its whereabouts.

"Good news ... we are very likely in orbit ... we seem to have a live spacecraft. The bad news is we don't know where it is," said Bruce Murray, a former director of Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory and a co-founder of the Planetary Society, which organised the launch.

The US team said tracking stations on Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, the Marshall Islands of the Pacific Ocean and at Panska Ves in Czech Republic had picked up signals. If all had gone to plan, the spacecraft would have unfurled eight triangular sails, each nearly 15 metres long and just a quarter of the thickness of a plastic rubbish bag.

But Russian space spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko said: "The booster's failure means that the solar sail vehicle was lost.

"The Russian navy is searching the area for the debris of the booster and the vehicle." He told the Associated Press a Russian government panel will investigate possible reasons for the failure of the project, which had its mission control in Moscow.

It had been hoped that Cosmos 1 would show an exciting new way for solar powered space travel. The spacecraft was supposed to show a so-called solar sail can make a controlled flight without having to rely on chemical fuel for propulsion beyond its launch.

The theory is that interstellar flight can be achieved by using the gentle push from the continuous stream of light particles known as photons. Though slight, the constant light pressure should allow a spacecraft to build up great speed over time and cover great distances.

If the mission is recovered, controlled flight, achieved by rotating each sail to change its pitch, will be attempted early next week. Cosmos 1 was supposed to orbit Earth once every 101 minutes and operate for at least a month.

Past attempts to unfold similar devices in space have failed. In 1999, Russia launched a similar experiment with a sun-reflecting device from its Mir space station, but the deployment mechanism jammed and the device burned up in the atmosphere.

In 2001, Russia again attempted a similar experiment, but the device failed to separate from the booster and burned in the atmosphere.

The Planetary Society was founded by the late astronomer Carl Sagan and brought to completion by Mr Murray, and Mr Friedman.Cosmos 1 was built by the Lavochkin Association and the space research institute at the Russian Academy of Science.

Funding came largely from Cosmos Studios of New York, a science-based entertainment company that was founded by Sagan's widow, Ann Druyan.

Speaking before reports from Russia of the project's apparent failure, Ms Druyan said: "Whatever we discover from this mission, if it's not a success, we'll still learn from it. The way to the stars is hard."