Kazakhstan's first satellite may be lost due to malfunction - space chief

Almaty, June 17 (Itar-Tass) - Kazakhstan's first and only satellite
KazSat-1 will most likely be lost, the head of the national space agency, Talgat Musabayev, said.

The satellite stopped responding to commands from Earth due to a
malfunction in the onboard computer system and has been drifting in
heliostationary orbit since June 8.

"This is a pure hardware failure in outer space," Musabayev told a
press conference on Monday.

In his words, Russian scientists and designers have attempted to
de-energise the satellite in order to cause an "improper" deactivation of
the onboard computer and then to try to turn in on again. "But the
satellite has proved to be die-hard and its batteries are still running,"
he added.

"There is yet one last way. The satellite will go into shadow in
September," Musabayev said, adding that upon leading the shadow on October
15 the satellite should "turn off 100 percent" and then the specialists
will try to resume its operation.

"But attempts to restore the satellite to order have not been
stopped," he said.

This is the second malfunction aboard the satellite over the past
three months. On April 17, 2008, a malfunction was fixed by specialists
from Russia's Khrunichev Research and Production Space Centre that had
made it.

The 65 million U.S. dollar satellite was launched to orbit from
Baikonur on June 19, 2006. Control of it was turned over to Kazakhstan in the autumn of the same year.