MOSCOW: Russia on Wednesday lost the ability to send commands to most of its satellites and its segment of the International Space Station following a power cable failure near Moscow.

The Roscosmos space agency attributed the embarrassing malfunction to basic road repair work near the sprawling Korolyov mission control centre outside Moscow.

Officials said the problem may take 48 hours to fix and could theoretically delay the November 19 return to Earth of three ISS members who are completing their four-month mission on board the floating international space lab.

“We have not had a connection with the ground telemetry stationed in Russia for the past two hours,” RIA Novosti quoted an unidentified source in the Russian space industry as saying.—AFP