Experts from the Russian Space Forces are continuing efforts to establish contact with the Mozhayets-5 educational satellite, an informed source with the program told RIA Novosti Friday.
“When the Mozhayets-5 educational satellite was placed in orbit, an error occurred in separation of the spacecraft from the adapter,” a spokesman for the Space Force, Alexei Kuznetsov, said.
He said no problems had been experienced during the launch of the Mozhayets and seven foreign mini-satellites, from Russia’s Plesetsk Space Center on October 27. However, experts were later unable to establish contact with the satellite.
The Mozhayets-5 was designed by students 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.
The other satellites launched by the Kosmos-3 rocket on October 27 – the Iranian’s Sina-1, China’s DMC, Norway’s NCube-2, the European Space Agency’s SSETI Express, the United Kingdom’s TopSat, Germany’s UWE-1, and Japan’s XI-V are all now orbiting successfully.
