Blow To European And Russian Space Programs

A European Space Agency (ESA) designed to collect data on polar ice caps broke up in flight Saturday after the booster system on the converted Russian ballistic missile launch vehicle failed to ignite properly.

"The booster unit did not switch on and it resulted in the failure of the satellite to reach orbit," said Russian Federal Space Agency spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko to the Associated Press. "The remnants of the satellite have fallen into the northern Arctic Ocean."

Debris from the CryoSat satellite fell into the ocean, said Davidenko.

The loss of CryoSat is a crippling blow to the ESA, which had hoped to use the satellite in a three-year mapping project of polar sea ice in an effort to determine the impact of global warming.

The incident also mars the reputation of the Russian space agency, which has aggressively tried to move into the commercial satellite launch business. 

"According to preliminary information, it was not a failure of the Space Forces, but the malfunction of the apparatus, which failed in bringing the satellite to orbit," Davidenko said. He added the head of the Khrunichev production company which manufactured the booster had apologized to ESA officials for the failure.

Engineers lost contact with the rocket and satellite two hours after it lifted off from Russia's northern Plesetsk launch facility, according to ESA spokesman Franco Bonacina. It was too have reached orbit about 1 1/2 hours after launch.

"We're trying to figure out exactly what happened," Bonacina said.

FMI: www.esa.int, Russian Federal Space Agency Page (English)