Scratch that solar sail[but do try again]

Solar Sail Launch Attempt Fails in Russia

An attempt to launch the world's first solar sail spacecraft fizzled when a booster rocket failed less than two minutes after liftoff, showering debris over the Arctic Ocean, the Russian space agency said Wednesday.

The Cosmos 1 vehicle, a joint Russian-American project, was intended to show that a so-called solar sail can make a controlled flight. Solar sails are envisioned as a potential means for achieving interstellar flight, allowing spacecraft to gradually build up great velocity and cover large distances.

But the Volna booster rocket failed 83 seconds after its Tuesday launch from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, the Russian space agency said.

Several hours before the announcement in Russia, U.S. scientists at the California-based Planetary Society said they believed they had detected signals from the $4 million spacecraft and that it was in orbit.

Later, however, the Planetary Society conceded that if the rocket failed during first-stage firing, then "this would mean that Cosmos 1 is lost."

The society, which organized the mission, said earlier signals received from three ground tracking stations seemed to indicate the craft could have made it into orbit, but "the project team now considers this to be a very small probability."