Lost In Space
A heavy fire broke out in a building at a military satellite ground command center Thursday and officials said communications with four satellites were temporarily lost before being restored.
Anatoly Perminov, head of the military's Space Forces, was quoted by the news agency ITAR-Tass late Thursday as saying contact with the satellites was restored "quickly," but it was unclear for how long contact had been lost.
In the hours after the fire broke out at 2:20 a.m. (3:20 p.m. EST Wednesday) there were conflicting reports about whether the satellites were out of contact. The Defense Ministry said control was "exercised without interruption," but Perminov later said contact had been lost.
The fire was extinguished 16 hours after it broke out, ITAR-Tass reported, citing a regional fire dispatcher.
Control over the rest of the military's satellites was not affected and the four satellites functioned normally during the communications break, Perminov said on the NTV television network. All weapons, ammunition and important documents were taken out of the three-story building, he added.
There was no information available on the capabilities of the four satellites. The Defense Ministry could not be reached for comment by The Associated Press.
Russia maintains about 100 military satellites, which perform visual reconnaissance on other countries, provide information about missile flights — including possible missile attacks — and for communications.
The number of satellites in orbit has declined significantly because of cash shortages since the Soviet collapse in 1991. The program reached a low in 1996 and 1997, when Russia had no photo-reconnaissance satellites in orbit for nearly eight months.
The military journal Jane's Defense Weekly reported Wednesday that Russia was again left with no photographic spy satellites after the last known craft of that type returned to Earth earlier this month.
The fire broke out in a ground station near Serpukhov in the Kaluga region, 100 miles south of Moscow. Firefighters used trucks spraying foam along with water cannons.
Russian television showed cement structures, rusting guard towers and huge dish antennas pointed directly upward at the facility, in a field surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and evergreen forests.
Sergei Shoigu, Russia's Emergency Situations Minister, told Ekho Moskvy radio that the fire spread through the building along burning cables, much as a fire spread in Moscow's Ostankino television tower last summer. That blaze knocked out television broadcasts to the capital for three days.
"It is not that the fire is serious, it's the object itself that's serious," Shoigu said.
Perminov said that the cause of the fire had not yet been determined. But ITAR-Tass reported that the fire had been caused by a short-circuit under the building and had spread to all three stories through communications networks.
By ANDREW KRAMER
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