Missing: One Russian spy satellite

Mission cut short
The official mission of  “Kosmos-2410” was “to hold flight and design trials of a new-generation satellite”, with the purpose “to develop and confirm design solutions forming the basis for a wide range of military space vehicles that will perform various functions for Russia's orbital group up to the year 2015.” In other words, it represented a new-model space spy.

But Ivan Safranov, aerospace writer at the Moscow daily Kommersant, learned another story from his contacts in the space industry. “The vehicle that was sent into orbit is only a modernized version of the old Kobalt-series satellite,” he wrote a few days after its launch.

According to Safranov’s article, the Kobalts had to be modernized because the planned replacement vehicle –- codename ‘Zircon’ -– was too expensive. The old Kobalts themselves were so expensive that only one was launched per year. One of the main goals of the modernized Kobalt, Safranov wrote, was an increased lifetime from two to six months.

Both the official account and Safranov’s version agreed that the new satellite would be in space for a very long time. So observers in Russia and the West were shocked to read, on Jan. 12, that the satellite had already returned to Earth. The official statements from the Russian defense ministry, which operates the satellite, said merely that the satellite had ended its mission “after flight tests were carried out.”

The fact that the satellite had in fact come down was later confirmed by U.S. satellite watcher Jonathan McDowell. Writing in his online journal "Space Report," McDowell stated that the mission ended on Jan. 9,  after “about only half its expected lifetime."

The satellite fired its braking rockets at about 2 AM EST. and "is presumed to have landed" shortly thereafter, or near noon in that part of Russia, McDowell wrote.

Weather reports from the region put the visibility then at 3 miles, wind speed at 11 mph from the southwest with gusts to 26 mph, and local temperature just above freezing. The overcast conditions were by no means unusually difficult for spacecraft recovery operations, but something apparently went badly wrong.

Meanwhile, Russian officials denied that the mission had been ended prematurely. Russian Space Forces spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov told an Interfax reporter that the satellite had fulfilled its program of flight tests, and a “controlled descent” was carried out “according to schedule.”

"The 107 days planned by the test program is a perfectly adequate period of time for this class of satellite," the vice president of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, Ivan Meshcheryakov, told the TASS news agency.

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