http://planetary.org/solarsailblog/index_05.html

Jun 23, 2005 | 16:37 PDT | 23:37 UTC

It's not over yet.

It's been much quieter here at The Planetary Society than over the last few days. There's not much new news to report. But we had a long chat with Lou this morning, and he emphasized to us that the analysis of the data that was received at the three ground stations on launch day is continuing. It's a challenge to compare the information between them, because each of the ground stations is different. The two at Petropavlovsk and Majuro were portable UHF antennas, very different from the permanent station at Panska Ves. The analysis is made more challenging by the fact that the people who gathered the data are now in transit from those remote locations to their home facilities. Viktor Kerzhanovich, who was at Majuro, will be back in Pasadena tomorrow, so the POP team will get their heads together and work over the Majuro data again upon his return. Lou himself will be back in town late tomorrow evening.

As for the rest of us here at the Society, we're in standby mode, just waiting to hear anything new, anything definitive. We still don't know which one of the many possible scenarios that could have happened on launch day was the one that actually played out. Makeev (the group that built the Volna rocket) has given another statement, reporting that that the rocket’s stages never separated and that it went down near Novaya Zemlya, a group of islands that separates the Barents Sea (which is where Cosmos 1 launched) from the Kara Sea. Which would make detection at Petropavlovsk, Majuro, and Panska Ves not make sense. So the team is poking at that data, checking to see if there's any alternative explanation.

I feel like a broken record. I know I'm saying the same things over and over. But these same things are running over and over in all of our minds, as we work, drive, eat, and sleep. What happened to Cosmos 1? I hope we find out soon! There are some space missions that vanished without a trace, with no way of finding any information about their loss -- Beagle 2 being the most recent one that comes to mind. Others left a confusing trail of data that was eventually pieced together, like Mars 96. But a very few spacecraft vanished and then reappeared, like SOHO. We are still holding out the slim hope that Cosmos 1 will turn up, alive and well, and will deploy those sails two days from now.

http://www.planetary.org/solarsail/latest_update.html

Solar Sail Update, June 23, 2005

Piecing the Data Together

by Louis Friedman

We’ve had a very exciting day here in Moscow. Bud Schurmeier and I met with Konstantin Pichkhadze, head of the Lavochkin Association, which built our spacecraft, Cosmos 1. We also received additional information about the launch vehicle failure. The Makeev Rocket Design Bureau, which is in charge of the Volna, believes that the rocket’s stages never separated and it went down near Novaya Zemlya, the archipelago that separates the Barents Sea from the Kara Sea.

At the Space Research Institute, we met for the first time since the launch with the ground station crew and data analysts from the tracking station in Tarusa, 130 kilometers outside of Moscow. They are studying data that was received at the ground stations at Petropavlosk, Kamchatka, Majuro, Marshall Islands, and Panska Ves, Czech Republic. The American team working with The Planetary Society is also looking at this data. We are hopeful of having more definitive results from their analysis in the next few days.

Bud Schurmeier and I are now on our way home after an exhausting and disappointing trip. We will be posting more updates upon my return.

The story of Cosmos 1 is not over.