MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Mission Control abandoned any further attempt on Friday to project the sun`s rays on to darkened areas of the earth with a giant mirror following a snag at the Mir space station that thwarted the scheme a day earlier. "The decision is final now. The fabric of the mirror got stuck really tightly and the umbrella wouldn`t unfold," a spokesman said by telephone from Mission Control outside Moscow. The mirror, a 25-metre (82-foot) disc of reflective fabric that was supposed to unfurl like an umbrella from an unmanned cargo ship floating close to Mir, became entangled with an antenna during attempts to begin the experiment on Thursday. "Of course we feel low, we had been preparing for the experiment, which was supposed to be such a breath-taking event. The cosmonauts are also very saddened by the failure," the spokesman said. He added that the Progress cargo ship would now head to earth on Friday, where it would partly burn up in the atmosphere and its remains would sink in the Pacific Ocean. The Mylar mirror was left hanging limply off the Progress, which had separated from Mir on Thursday. The experiment had been intended to show whether such mirrors could light up the Russian north or other areas with long, dark winters or could bring light to disaster zones. Sceptics say the experiment is a hare-brained scheme doomed to fail while critics fear it could open the way for advertisers to beam down cosmic messages from space. But the designers say a series of mirrors or one giant mirror could harness the sun to overcome darkness and even help boost agriculture by lengthening the day. Russian space officials had hoped a light spot of between six and eight km (four and

five miles) in diameter would be visible in parts of Europe and in Canada.