An interdepartmental commission at the Plesetsk spaceport in Russia revealed Monday that an advanced military satellite designed to detect submurged submarines has been "lost" and could come crashing back to earth within a day or two, marking the latest setback for Russia's space program.
The Kanopus-ST remote-sensing spacecraft failed to seperate from its booster rocket, the Soyuz-2.1b, as planned following its launch from the Plesetsk cosmodrome on Dec. 5, causing the planned trajectory to change, according to the Tass News Agency.
"The Cosmos-class spacecraft was recognized as lost due to impossibility of using it for the intended purpose," said an unidentified source.
Equipped with cameras capable of scanning oceans, identifying submarines underwater and detecting forest fires, this state-of-the-art satellite was 10 years in the making, reported al-Jazeera. However that all went up in smoke when specialists tried to repeat commands on seperation, but failed.
"One of the four locks holding onto the satellite malfunctioned," the source added.
The loss of the satellite marks another setback for Russia's space industry, reported FOX News. In May, a Proton-M rocket carrying a Mexican satellite burned up over Siberia after it developed a problem in its third-stage engine just eight minutes into the flight.
This came just weeks after a Russian cargo ship with three tons of supplies failed to dock at the International Space Station and wound up falling back to Earth over the Pacific after becoming stranded in low orbit.
In the meantime, Russia has delayed the a launch from its Eastern spaceport near the Chinese border because corruption scandals and technical glitches has caused its completion to be put behind schedule.
"This is a systemic problem. We're dealing with the leftovers of the Soviet space industry that have been in the deepest crisis in recent years," said independent industry expert Pavel Luzin.
