MOSCOW, Oct 8: A European satellite designed to measure how fast the polar ice caps are melting crashed into the Arctic Ocean on Saturday after its launch went wrong. The European Space Agency’s Cryosat satellite was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, in northern Russia, but failed to establish communication at the scheduled time.

“We believe the satellite ... fell where the second rocket stage is supposed to fall, that is in the Lincoln Sea, near the North Pole,” Itar-Tass news agency quoted Russian Space Troops official Oleg Gromov as saying.

European Space Agency spokesman Franco Bonacina said ground stations did not see if the rocket’s third stage fired to put the satellite into the correct orbit.

“We don’t really know what’s happening right now,” he told Reuters.

The satellite was launched at about 1500 GMT on Saturday on board a Rokot launcher, which is a converted inter-continental ballistic missile.—Reuters