The privately funded US-Russian craft disappeared after it was launched Tuesday from a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea aboard a converted inter-continental ballistic missile.

"In the past twenty-four hours, the Russian space agency (RKA) has made a tentative conclusion that the Volna rocket carrying Cosmos 1 failed during the firing of the first stage. This would mean that Cosmos 1 is lost," the group said in a statement Thursday.

However there were "some inconsistent indications . . . from other sources" suggesting that Cosmos 1 may have survived and is in a lower orbit than one intended.

Even though the project team "considers this to be a very small probability . . . efforts to contact and track the spacecraft" will continue, it said.

Russia's military on Thursday searched around the Arctic islands of Novaya Zemlya for the Cosmos 1 wreckage, ITAR-TASS news agency said.

Personnel from the Russian navy's Northern Fleet and space forces were scouring the uninhabited Novaya Zemlya archipelago between the Barents and Kara seas, ITAR-TASS quoted the fleet's headquarters as saying.

Russia's space forces told AFP that fragments had been found of what was probably a Molnaya-M rocket, which crashed Tuesday after lift off from Plessetsk in northern Russia while carrying a military satellite.

The 100 kilogramme (220 pound) craft had been scheduled to reach an 800 kilometer (500 mile) high orbit.

Built by Russia's Lavochkin Association and the Russian Academy of Science's Space Research Institute, the bulk of the funds came from the Cosmos Studios in the United States. The launch was funded by the Russian government.

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