Reuters reports that Cosmos 1, the world's first solar sail spacecraft, has been launched from a Russian submarine on board a converted Russian intercontinental ballistic missile.
Planetary Society co-founder Bruce Murray said that it was likely craft would fail:
"It will be a giant leap forward ... if it succeeds," Murray told reporters before the launch. "It will be a not-surprising failure if it doesn't."
I really hope the solar sails work.
UPDATE: The spacecraft may have malfunctioned. The BBC reports that no signals from the "solar sail" craft have been detected at mission control and controllers are unsure whether the sail separated from its launch rocket.
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