MOSCOW. April 4 (Interfax) - Russia's Elektro-L weather satellite that has run into problems this week remains in its definitive orbit and has not lost contact with Earth, though its device for taking pictures of clouds has been switched off temporarily, Interfax was told at the Planeta space meteorological research center on Thursday.
A Planeta spokesman said there would be attempts shortly to switch the MSU-GS scanner back on but that all other transmissions from the Elektro-L were coming through normally.
The spokesman said the MSU-GS was apparently in order but it was unclear which way it was facing. "In principle, it's serviceable but we need to look at the stabilization aspect and check how distorted the information would be," he said.
The spokesman denied that the glitches would affect weather forecasts because the Elektro-L is on a test mission and, under international agreements, Russia receives large amounts of weather data from satellites launched by other countries.
The spokesman said the Elektro-L problems were discussed at a conference at Planeta on Thursday at which specialists from NPO Lavochkin, the satellite's manufacturer, were present.
Earlier, the Scientific Center of Earth Operative Monitoring website said the Elektro-L had run out of order and stopped transmitting images.
"Current data transfer has been suspended for technical reasons," said a report posted on the website's Elektro-L page.
The satellite transmitted its last image on March 31. The center was receiving data updates from other satellites, such as Resurs-P and Canopus-B, in a normal manner.
A chart of reading from the Elektro-L satellite's SKL-E instrument available on the Federal Hydro-Meteorology and Environmental Monitoring Service website showed a break in data transfer on March 31 but data transfer resumed several hours later. A chart of readings from the FM-E magnetometer mounted on the same satellite demonstrated a sudden disturbance of the magnetosphere along the x-axis in the same period.
A rocket and space industry representative told Interfax-AVN the satellite had stabilization problems.
Interfax-AVN has yet to obtain an official comment from Roscosmos.
NPO Lavochkin General Designer and Director Viktor Khartov told Interfax-AVN earlier about problems with the Elektro-L payload but said it was still possible to use the satellite as intended.
Elektro-L was put into orbit in late January 2011. It was tested until August and put on a trial run in a later period. NPO Lavochkin designed the modular satellite mounted on the Navigator non-pressurized platform. The satellite has a takeoff mass of 1,766 kilograms and a power output of 1.7 kilowatts. Its service life is ten years.
The main element of the satellite payload is the MSU-GS geostationary multi-zonal scanner, which consists of two units filming all of Earth in visible and infrared spectrums. The filming is done every 30 minutes, which may be reduced to 10-15 minutes by a command from the ground control station in case of natural disasters.