A  space transportation experiment held on Tuesday from the Russian satellite Foton 3M was curiously described as both successful and unsuccessful. While officials said the space lift failed to deliver its load to Earth, some, including the authors of the project, assert that the results were nevertheless of great value.

The experiment, called YES2, which stands for second Young Engineers Satellite, was prepared by about 500 university students from all over the world. The goal was to test a new system, called space lift, that could send cargo from orbit to Earth via a tether-line attached to a capsule. The idea is to eliminate the need for re-entry jet engines and the associated problems with de-orbiting.

YES2 was launched into space aboard the Russian research satellite Foton 3M and is comprised of three main components: a descending capsule called Fotino, a support system called MASS and a spring-loaded mechanism called FLOYD.

The plan was that Fotino would be launched from the mothership with FLOYD springs and begins its descent, unwinding a 30-kilometer tether line made of Dyneema, the strongest man-made fiber. The MASS system then would activate and keep the tether taut as gravity pulls the capsule to Earth. At its lowest point the Fotino would cut the tether and continue its descent by parachute. Designers said it could be a low cost option for use by the International Space Station.

However, something went wrong on Tuesday and the tether got stuck after deploying just 8.5 kilometers. The Fotino capsule detached from it but researchers say that it will either become a piece of ever-orbiting space debris, or just burn in the atmosphere.

Researcher Nikolai Sokolov, who oversaw the YES2 experiment from the Russian mission control center, told reporters that the experiment ended in failure. Russia's Mission Control Center delivered all commands clear and in time, and questions about its failure should be posed to European Space Agency, the official pointed out.

Officials in the European Space Agency disagreed. "I can say already that now we have the first feedback from the experiments and from the scientists that the Foton M3 mission is a success," Josef Winter, head of the agency's Payload and Microgravity Platform Division, told the Associated Press.

Project designers also refused to call it a failure. "The way we in the YES2 team feel is that it's gone reasonably well. YES2 is a student experiment and it's testing a new concept for a space mission for the first time," YES2 project manager Roger Walker told the AP.

By Kirill Bessonov