Russia loses contact with satellite full of geckos

Photon-M satellite and five reptiles on board will be lost unless contact can be re-established, says space industry source

The Guardian, Alec Luhn in Moscow, Thursday 24 July 2014

Soyuz rockets at a space research centre in Samara, Russia. Photograph:
Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images

Russian mission control has lost contact with a satellite full of geckos slated to participate in a weightlessness experiment, in the latest setback for the country's space industry.

The Photon-M satellite and its reptile crew will likely be lost and fall from orbit in a few months unless specialists can re-establish communications with it, a source in the space industry told Interfax news agency. The four female and one male gecko on board will die from hunger within two and a half months or earlier if the craft's life-support systems are also disrupted, the source said.

Part of a research satellite programme stretching back to 1985, the Photon satellite was launched into space atop a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome on 19 July, after the mission was held up for three weeks because of delays in testing the electrical system.

After rejecting future cooperation with Nasa amid deteriorating relations with the United States, the Russian government in May announced $52bn in investment in its space industry until 2020. But just days later a Proton-M rocket carrying a communications satellite to provide internet to remote parts of the country exploded minutes after liftoff, the second crash of a Proton rocket in less than a year. In June, the maiden voyage of Russia's first new spacecraft since the Soviet era, the Angara rocket, was aborted at the last minute on live television as the president, Vladimir Putin, looked on, although it was successfully launched on 9 July.

The last Photon-M to be launched in 2007, a veritable Noah's Ark carrying newts, lizards, Mongolian gerbils, slugs, butterflies and spiders, returned successfully to Earth. But the first Photon-M launch in 2001 ended in tragedy after the launch vehicle fell back to Earth and exploded, killing a soldier.