MOSCOW, October 28 (RIA Novosti) - Initial reports said that failure to contact the Mozhayets-5 satellite was due to an error that occurred when the adapter separated from the rocket launcher October 27, the Russian Space Force said Friday.
"When the Mozhayets-5 educational satellite was placed in orbit, an error occurred in separation of the spacecraft from the adapter," spokesman for the Space Force Alexei Kuznetsov said, adding that experts were still trying to establish contact.
An informed source with the program said earlier that no problems had been experienced during the launch of the Mozhayets and seven foreign minisatellites from Russia's Plesetsk Space Center, but experts were later unable to establish contact with the satellite.
The Mozhayets-5 was designed by students and teachers of the Mozhaisk Military Space Academy to test laser-optic communications.
Two similar satellites, the Mozhayets-3 and the Mozhayets-4, are already in orbit, in addition to the Tatyana satellite, launched in early 2005 to mark the 250th anniversary of Moscow State University.
The minisatellites put into orbit were the China-DMC, Britain's TopSat, Iran's SINA-1, Norway's Ncube-2, Germany's UWE-1, Japan's XI-V, and the European Space Agency's SSET Express.
