http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,67859,00.html
"the world's first solar-sail-powered spacecraft is ready"
"Things are looking good for June 21st,"
"The keys to Cosmos 1's innovative propulsion system are its eight triangular sails, made from highly reflective, 50-foot-tall Mylar sheets."
"The demonstration will last no more than several weeks, according to the Planetary Society. By then, the spacecraft's fragile sails will have disintegrated."
"the Planetary Society will launch Cosmos 1 on a modified Russian ballistic missile, fired from a submarine in the Barents Sea."
A sail fired from a submarine... nice touch.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=8864165
"The world's first solar sail-powered spacecraft failed to reach its planned orbit after the Russian rocket carrying it shut down less than two minutes after launch, Russia's state space agency said on Wednesday."
wtg Roskosmos!
http://planetary.org/solarsail/latest_update.html
"In the past twenty-four hours, the Russian space agency (RKA) has made a tentative conclusion that the Volna rocket carrying Cosmos 1 failed during the firing of the first stage. This would mean that Cosmos 1 is lost.
While it is likely that this conclusion is correct, there are some inconsistent indications from information received from other sources. The Cosmos 1 team observed what appear to be signals, that looks like they are from the spacecraft when it was over the first three ground stations and some Doppler data over one of these stations. This might indicate that Cosmos 1 made it into orbit, but probably a lower one than intended."
"If the spacecraft made it to orbit, its autonomous program might be working, and after 4 days the sails could automatically deploy."
http://planetary.org/solarsailblog/index_05.html
"With failure of Cosmos 1 virtually certain, the team members that have been staffing Project Operations Pasadena have elected to return to their homes."
"The team may be scattering, but it's not over. The search for the spacecraft continues."
"If you, too, have a spare observatory, feel free to search at a frequency of 401.5275 Hz"
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Russian-Express-AM3-Satellite-a-Successful-Launch-3723.shtml
"Itar-Tass has announced that Russia has [successfully] launched Russian Express AM3, one of the latest-generation telecommunication satellite.
According to officials sources, the satellite was launched from Baikonur, on Friday and it came into orbit Saturday, at 06:15 Moscow Time. The booster rocket was a Proton-K."