Why do they insist on launching it from a submarine? Is it partly a military experiment?

Ping!

It is commercial and they have done it before.

Also, they may have picked up the signal just now.

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Solar Sail Lost in Space?

By Amit Asaravala

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67967,00.html

03:44 PM Jun. 21, 2005 PT

PASADENA, California -- The Cosmos solar sail is missing shortly after its launch from a Russian nuclear submarine.

The $4 million Cosmos 1 spacecraft blasted off atop a converted Russian missile at approximately 12:46 p.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday, but ground tracking stations failed to pick up its signal after an initial burst of data, according to mission controllers.

See photos

The U.S. Strategic Command, which monitors launches, also could not detect the spacecraft at its expected position in orbit.

"The news is not good," said Cosmos 1 project operations manager Jim Cantrell. "On the other hand, we do not have direct evidence of a failureâ€¦. It's worrisome and it's not what we hoped to have happen."

Developed by the Planetary Society, a Pasadena-based space interest group, Cosmos 1 was to have become the first spacecraft to use nothing more than the energy of sunlight to propel itself into higher orbits around Earth.

The light would have pushed against eight giant sails protruding from the spacecraft, just as ships on Earth are propelled by the wind.

As of 4:00 p.m., mission controllers had conflicting information about what had happened to Cosmos 1. Cantrell said the initial burst of data from the spacecraft meant that the Russian missile successfully put Cosmos 1 in orbit, although possibly not at the right position.

However, that statement was immediately contradicted by Louis Friedman, director of the Planetary Society.

"I think that's a premature conclusion," he said via a conference call from the mission operations center in Moscow.

Friedman said some of the data from the launch may ultimately reveal that the Russian missile did not launch as planned.

Planetary Society members said they will continue searching for a signal from the spacecraft over the next several days.

An earlier version of the Cosmos 1 spacecraft was lost in 2001 in a similar launch. That spacecraft failed to separate from the missile and crashed in Kamchatka.

Sounds quite a bit different than this article:

Report: Sail's rocket failed at +83 seconds
Spaceflight Now ^ | June 21, 2005 | STEPHEN CLARK

Posted on 06/21/2005 5:58:07 PM PDT by cabojoe

Russian sailors launched the world's first solar sail from a nuclear submarine today as planned, but the Cosmos 1 craft's fate remains unknown after the first set of ground station passes turned up no sign of the small satellite. Casting further doubt, the Russian news service ITAR-TASS reported the rocket's first stage failed 83 seconds after liftoff. Confirmation of that story is pending.