according to this article from Aviation Week & Space Technology.
Planetary Society Hoping To Launch Another Solar Sail By End Of '06
07/25/2005 09:35:22 AM
By Jefferson Morris
While still trying to sort out precisely what happened to its Cosmos-1 solar sail spacecraft, the Planetary Society hopes to be able to build and launch another solar sail by the end of next year, according to Director Louis Friedman.
"We're going to make plans to try and do Cosmos-1 again and to have another attempt at flying the first solar sail mission," Friedman told The DAILY. "We have a lot of ground spares and we could probably build a spacecraft fairly quickly ... maybe in a year."
Cosmos-1 was lost June 21 when its Volna rocket failed shortly after liftoff from a submerged Russian submarine in the Barents Sea. In 2001 a suborbital solar sail test spacecraft built by the society also was lost in a Volna mishap.
The society plans to seek another launch vehicle for its next try. The spacecraft could launch on a Russian Dnepr, Soyuz-Fregat, or European Ariane 5 as a secondary payload, Friedman said. It also could fly as the sole payload on a smaller vehicle such Russia's Cosmos-3M.
There's more info there.
Frankly, they tried something bold on a shoestring budget. If it'd cost much more, they might not have gotten past the "yet another paper study" phase. Better to reach for the stars and come up short than never to try at all.