Russian Space Station Cargo Ship Crashes

The unmanned Progress M-12M vehicle failed to reach orbit and may have crashed into Siberia or Russia's Altai region.


The vehicle was carrying several tons of supplies to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

This is the first failure of the Progress spacecraft system since 1978.

There is currently no reports of casualties on the ground, and the orbiting astronauts have enough supplies for up to 3 months.


The unmanned Progress-M-12M vessel was carrying several tonnes of supplies for the international crew on board the space station but failed to reach the correct orbit, Russian space agency Roskosmos said.


"The Progress M-12M cargo craft was not placed in its assigned orbit," said the two-sentence statement.

The Interfax news agency quoted a source as saying it may have crashed into Siberia while RIA Novosti said it could have hit Russia's Altai region on the border with Mongolia and China.

RIA Novosti quoted a local official in the Gorni Altai region as saying a blast had been heard at a distance of 100 kilometers but there were no reports of casualties.kilometers

The cargo vessel had blasted off at 5:00 pm Moscow time (1300 GMT) on a Soyuz-U rocket from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Interfax news agency said it was the first problem with a Russian or Soviet cargo delivery to space since 1978.


"But considering that the (US) shuttles no longer fly, Russian mission control may decide to reduce the size of the ISS crew because of supply problem," analyst Sergei Puzanov told Interfax.

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RIA Novosti also reported that mission control had stopped receiving trajectory data from the craft after the apparent accident.

Another source told Interfax that the "emergency situation" occurred in the third stage of the 5:00 pm (1300 GMT) rocket launch.

"Our experts are examining the situation," the Russian space official said.

The news comes just weeks after the end of the US space shuttle program made Russia the world's only link with the ISS and its alternating multinational crew.alternating


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