The Solar Sail in Orbit Image: NPO Lavochkin, The Planetary Society (c)

As silence from the spacecraft continues, Cosmos 1 Team works to analyse its cause

The silence from Cosmos 1 continues four and a half hours after it was launched from the submarine Borisoglebsk in the Barents Sea.

"We don't know why this is" said Project Director Louis Friedman by phone from Moscow during a press conference at The Planetary Society Tuesday afternoon. "It is obviously very worrisome, but it is too early to draw any conclusions."

At 3:00 yesterday afternoon (22:00 UTC) The Planetary Society released the following statement regarding the condition of Cosmos 1:

The Cosmos 1 spacecraft was launched today but we cannot, at this time, confirm that a successful orbit injection. Some launch vehicle and spacecraft telemetry data gave ambiguous information during the launch. Since the orbit insertion burn, no information has been received from the spacecraft. There are continuing efforts to receive a signal from the spacecraft.

15 minutes after the launch Doppler data was received from the spacecraft for around 6 minutes. The signal was steady at first but became irregular about the time the orbit insertion motor was scheduled to fire. Within three minutes the signal was lost, and the spacecraft has not been observed or contacted since. According to Mission Manager Jim Cantrell, the fact that the spacecraft transmitter did turn on, as it was programmed to do, suggests that Cosmos 1 separated from the launch vehicle as planned. If a problem occurred, it may have taken place during the orbit insertion stage.

There are other possibilities as well: according to Louis Friedman, mission controllers in Russia are also concerned about a report of anomolous data during early stages of the launch. This could indicate a possible problem with the Volna launch vehicle.

At the press conference Cantrell reported that the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) was also looking for the spacecraft. STRATCOM was in touch with the Cosmos 1 team during the planning stages of the mission, and was supposed to track the spacecraft from its observation stations in Alaska and the Pacific Ocean. So far, however, STRATCOM has detected no sign of the spacecraft.

According to Cantrell, this could mean either that the spacecraft simply "is not there," or that STRATCOM weren't looking in the right place. "The spacecraft clearly wasn't where we told them that it would be" said Cantrell, "but it is possible that it passed them by."

No signal from Cosmos1 was received during the last contact period at the ground station in Panska Ves. The next possible contact will be with the Tarusa and Bear Lakes ground stations near Moscow.

"Not getting a signal from a spacecraft during the first few orbits is not extremely unusual" said Cantrell. He indicated that although the signs were not promising, the Cosmos 1 team was still far from giving up on the spacecraft and the mission

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