A privately funded spacecraft launched from a Russian submarine and intended to deploy a solar sail into Earth's orbit was lost to controllers shortly after takeoff, but late Tuesday engineers tracking Cosmos 1 said the craft might have been found.
Engineers in Moscow and Pasadena poring through reams of tracking data said eight hours after the launch, which took place in the Barents Sea, that they might have detected faint signals from the craft indicating that it was in space, but not in its intended orbit.
Data from four separate tracking stations -- buried under a large amount of background noise -- "appears to indicate a spacecraft signal," the Planetary Society said in a late-night statement released in Pasadena, where the society is based.
"It seems like it is in orbit," said David Betts, director of projects for the society. "The most consistent story is that it made its orbit and is transmitting. That's great news."
Cosmos 1 -- a $4-million spacecraft powered only by the sun's rays -- is regarded by its makers as the first practical attempt to engineer a class of space vehicle that could reach other planets and other stars using rocket power only to attain Earth orbit. Powered by photons emitted by the sun, it could theoretically attain speeds far greater than those of the space shuttle.
The apparent reacquisition of the spacecraft was the first bit of good news for the assembled members of the society, who had grown increasingly despondent as the day wore on without any sign of the craft from the tracking stations. A search by U.S. Strategic Command government radar failed to find any trace of the craft. But they were looking for it in the expected orbit, and that's probably why they didn't find it, Betts said.
"It's probably in a lower orbit, which is why the signals are so weak," he added.
The tracking stations in Petropavlovsk and the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, Majuro in the Marshall Islands and Panska Ves in the Czech Republic are part of the Russian space network. The mission is being controlled in Moscow, with a secondary control center in a remodeled carriage house near the society's headquarters in Pasadena.
Theorists and science-fiction writers have long imagined a type of spacecraft that would be swept through the cosmos by the sun's rays as they were reflected on broad panels or wings. The spaceship would steadily accelerate as it journeyed deep into space, venturing into the outer solar system or possibly other stars. Among the strongest proponents for such a spacecraft was the late astronomer Carl Sagan.
