"According to the telemetric flight data, the experiment to send the Demonstrator-2 into orbit and return it to the atmosphere went successfully," the navy said.

Babakin spokeswoman Lidia Avdeyeva said a search was under way for the craft around the Kamchatka Peninsula on Russia's Pacific Coast.

The test model was a 2.6-foot diameter sphere launched atop the ICBM, Avdeyeva said. Upon release, its two sail-like panels one 7.6 feet high, the other 12.5 feet high inflated one inside the other and then drifted back to Earth.

"I'm very excited about this technology, for using it as an emergency bailout or for unloading cargo from space stations," said James Oberg, a Houston, Texas-based space industry expert.

He said the European Space Agency has been particularly interested in developing such an inflatable recovery vehicle to more quickly retrieve its experiments from the international space station ( news - web sites).

The Babakin Space Center is also designing a solar sail with the Planetary Society, a Pasadena, Calif.-based group founded by visionary astronomer Carl Sagan. The group sent up a prototype from a Russian submarine last July, but it did not achieve enough thrust during the third stage of its launch, and the payload containing the spacecraft did not separate from the booster, organizers said.