Russia Loses Contact with Earth-monitor Satellite

MOSCOW, Russia, Oct. 20, 2005/Satnews Daily/ — Following the loss of a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite on October 8, Russia appeared to have suffered its second mishap this month after the country’s space agency admitted on Wednesday engineers had lost contact with an Earth-monitoring satellite.

Reports say Federal Space Agency controllers were unable to locate the Russian-built Monitor-E satellite after it lost orientation on Tuesday. The Monitor-E satellite was launched from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia on Aug. 26. The satellite was designed to assess the aftermath of emergency situations, map surface areas, survey agriculture and forestry conditions. It can also be helpful in ecological monitoring, geological cartography and the search for mineral resources and was to operate for five years.

The agency blamed the Russian company Khrunichev, which was also responsible for a faulty booster rocket that caused the loss of Cryosat. CryoSat, which was to measure the ice at the Earth’s poles with previously unattained accuracy, ended in a failure due to an anomaly in the launch sequence. The $146 million CryoSat satellite fell into the nominal drop zone north of Greenland close to the North Pole into high seas with no consequences to populated areas.

Khrunichev has been the main revenue earner for Russia's cash-strapped space program, which has depended on income from commercial launches of foreign satellites.

Also on Wednesday, a Mission Control spokeswoman said a maneuver to raise the orbit of the international space station had failed after engines on a docked cargo ship cut off unexpectedly.

An AP report quoted Vera Medvedkova who said a Progress M-54 ship fired its engines beginning at about 2101GMT to raise the orbiting station about 6 miles. But the craft's engines quit after a little more than a minute, she said.

Engineers were looking at the problem and expected to try again to raise the station at a later date, she said. The higher orbit would make it easier for the next cargo ship, scheduled to be launched in December, to dock at the station.

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