Another Triumph of French Engineering

Here.

October 9, 2005

MOSCOW, Oct. 8 (Agence France-Presse) - A European satellite that was to have helped scientists understand global warming by scanning the thickness of polar ice sheets crashed into the Arctic Ocean on Saturday after its Russian launcher failed, officials said.

The $170 million Cryosat satellite blasted off from the northwestern Plesetsk cosmodrome atop a Russian-built Rockot launch vehicle, a converted Soviet-era SS-19 ballistic missile, but failed to achieve orbit, Vyacheslav Davidenko, a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

The European Space Agency official in charge of the project, Pascal Gilles, said engineers and scientists had worked five to six years on the satellite. The space agency was expected to make an announcement on Monday on what steps it would take regarding the Cryosat, which was the first of six "Earth Explorer" satellites designed to explore key environmental problems.