Contact was lost with the Cosmos-1 experimental Russian-U.S. satellite, also known as Solar Sail on June 22. One version of the failure being considered is that the booster's service life had expired long before yesterday's launch.
The satellite was carried by a Volna launch vehicle - a civil derivative of the RSM-50 (NATO codename - SS-N-18) intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) - launched by the Borisoglebsk nuclear ballistic missile submarine (SSBN). The carrier's engine inadvertently shut down 83 seconds after it was launched.
ICBMs decommissioned by the Navy and the Strategic Missile Force can be simply destroyed or, under the START Treaty, or launched for non-military purposes. This is what the military is trying to do by launching decommissioned missiles on commercial missions. The first trial booster was launched in 1995, but the military has not managed to make much money since then.
Submarine crews are the least culpable parties when it comes to failures because launch vehicles blast off quite successfully. Malfunctions happen after the launch, and hardware is obviously to blame. It now seems that the converted ICBMs' service lives have expired, meaning that further launches will hardly be more successful. The Makeyev Design Bureau, the developer of the RSM-50 missile, is on the verge of closure. The specialist design bureau has been stripped of submarine-launched missile development orders, which were instead given to the Moscow Heat Engineering Institute - a specialist in land-based ballistic missiles only. The Institute has yet not been able to develop an advanced missile, the Bulava, and the Defense Ministry no longer orders any of the old RSM-50 and RSM-54.
As a result, Russia's nuclear triad will have to cope without a naval component. There are missiles on board the nuclear submarines, but no one can be sure they will hit their targets, rather than lose their warheads somewhere between the Urals and the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Far East.
