A severed communications cable in the Moscow region on Wednesday has rendered Russian specialists unable to control most of the country's civilian satellites, a source in the space industry said.

"Communications have been lost between civilian ground-based tracking, command and control stations," the source told RIA Novosti.

It will take at least 48 hours to fix the problem, the source said.

The emergency has not affected communications with the Russian segment of the International Space Station, the Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said.

Russian earth remote sensing satellites, too, continue to send data to ground control centers as usual, Alexander Semerikov, deputy head of the Earth Monitoring Center, said.

The Defense Ministry confirmed to RIA Novosti that its military satellites had not been affected as they use their own communications channels.

Earlier on Wednesday Russia launched a dual-purpose Meridian-series telecoms satellite.

Source: RIA Novosti