PASADENA (USA), June 22: The world’s first solar sail-powered spacecraft failed to reach its planned orbit after the Russian rocket carrying it shut down two minutes after launch.

It was unclear if privately funded Cosmos 1 had crashed to Earth, and the US backers of the project said they had detected faint signals from the craft.

“The unique solar sail spacecraft was not delivered to its planned orbit because the engine of the first stage of the ‘Volna’ rocket shut itself down 83 seconds into the flight,” Russia’s Federal Space Agency said in a statement.—Reuters