Russia loses contact with Angola, in outer space, 24 hours after launch
Moscow — Russia has lost contact with Angola’s first national telecoms satellite launched from the Baikonur space pad on Tuesday, a source in the space industry told AFP on Wednesday. The incident involving the Russian-made Angosat-1 is a new embarrassment for the country’s once proud space industry after Russia lost contact with a weather satellite in November after it was launched from a new cosmodrome in the country’s far east. "Contact has temporarily been lost," the source told AFP, adding that 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 on 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 Yuzhma...
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