Moscow (December 28, 2017: Russia has lost contact with Angola’s first national telecoms satellite launched from the Baikonur space pad, a source in the space industry said on Wednesday.
The incident involving the Russian-made Angosat-1 is a new embarrassment for the country’s once proud space industry after Russia in November lost contact with a weather satellite after it was launched from a new cosmodrome in the country’s far east.“Contact has temporarily been lost,” the source said, adding specialists were now looking into the matter.
The source said officials had stopped receiving “telemetry data” but called it a “rather common situation” and expressed the hope that contact would be re-established.
The reason for the loss of contact was not immediately clear.
Earlier Wednesday the Russian space agency Roscosmos said that the satellite had been successfully launched and reached orbit.
The Zenit-2SB rocket carrying Angosat to orbit was supplied by Ukrainian maker Yuzhmash, making the launch a rare joint project between the two countries since 2014, when Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
The Angosat project was agreed by Russia and Angola in 2009 and includes the satellite, its launch, and on-ground infrastructure in a suburb of the capital Luanda.
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