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 |  | Russia Loses Contact with QuickBird 1 Satellite
By Andrew Kramer
posted: 08:35 am ET
21 November 2000
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MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian ground controllers lost contact with an American commercial satellite on Tuesday after the small craft was blasted into orbit on a Russian rocket, officials said.
The QuickBird 1 satellite belonged to the Longmont, Colorado-based company Earth Watch, and was the first of two satellites the company planned to launch on Russian rockets.
The Russian Cosmos 3 rocket carrying the satellite blasted off Monday at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (23:00 GMT) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arctic and made the fiery ascent without trouble, the Strategic Missile Forces press service said. Controllers then lost contact with it.
The Interfax news agency, citing unnamed specialists at the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviakosmos), reported that the second stage of the booster rocket shut down too early and that the satellite would likely plunge back into the Earth's atmosphere.
The half-ton satellite was made by another Colorado company, Ball Aerospace. It was designed to take high-resolution pictures of the Earth's surface for commercial purposes, such as land management, mapping and environmental studies.
U.S. companies routinely use Russian space facilities to launch commercial satellites. The rockets are usually considered reliable and a good bargain compared with European and American competitors. The launch Tuesday was the 401st Cosmos 3 blastoff from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Interfax said.
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