Russia loses link to its civil satellites

A severed communications cable near Moscow has rendered specialists unable to control most of Russia's civilian satellites, a source in the space industry said. "Communications have been lost between civilian ground-based tracking, command and control stations," the source told RIA Novosti. The Wednesday incident has not affected communications with the Russian segment of the International Space Station, the Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said. Military officials said military satellites remained connected because they use their own communications channels. Russian earth remote sensing satellites were still sending data to ground control centers as usual, Alexander Semerikov, deputy head of the Earth Monitoring Center, said. Communication with the commercial satellites could be down for as long as 48 hours, RIA Novosti said.