The US national security agency and defence information systems agency are probing the incident which occurred last Tuesday even though Panamsat, the US company which owns the satellite, said the failure seemed to be due to a component problem.

The suspicion of a sabotage was based on a threat in April by an international group which said it would demonstrate in May that it could track US submarines with stolen software. The group, which calls itself "master of download", claimed it represents 15 hackers from the US, Britain and Russia.

The $ 250-mn satellite spun out of control from the failure of its gyroscope and backup system. With the sudden break in the satellite link, about 35 million customers on earth saw their pagers go dead and doctors, banks and other institutions were cut off from the urgentinformation they needed to access.