MOSCOW - A joint Russian-U.S. project to launch a solar sail space vehicle crashed back to Earth when the booster rocket's engine failed less than two minutes after takeoff, the Russian space agency said today.

The $4 million Cosmos 1 vehicle was intended to show that a so-called solar sail can make a controlled flight. Solar sails, designed to be propelled by pressure from sunlight, are envisioned as a potential means for achieving interstellar flight, allowing such spacecraft to gradually build up great velocity and cover large distances.

But the Volna booster rocket failed 83 seconds after its launch from a Russian nuclear submarine in the northern Barents Sea just before midnight Tuesday in Moscow, the Russian space agency said.

Its spokesman, Vyacheslav Davidenko, said that "the booster's failure means that the solar sail vehicle was lost." The Russian Defense Ministry launched a search for debris from the booster and the vehicle, he said.

A government panel will investigate possible reasons behind the failure of the three-stage rocket's first-stage engine, Davidenko said.

Past attempts to unfold similar devices in space have failed.

In 1999, Russia launched a similar experiment with a sun-reflecting device from its Mir space station, but the deployment mechanism jammed and the device burned up in the atmosphere.

In 2001, Russia again attempted a similar experiment, but the device failed to separate from the booster and burned in the atmosphere.

The solar sail vehicle weighed about 242 pounds and was designed to go into an orbit more than 500 miles high. It was designed to be powered by eight 49.5-foot-long sail structures resembling the blades of a windmill.