Roskosmos officially recognized the failure of the mission “Progress” – BBC Russian

• 29 April 2015

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“Progress” was to dock with the ISS a few hours after the start

“Roskosmos” admitted the failure of the flight spacecraft “Progress-M27M” to the International Space Station.

” Installed failures of individual components and assemblies freight cargo ship and found no leakage of trunk-block propulsion system. In this regard, a further flight of the ship and its docking with the ISS does not seem possible “- he said at a press conference in Moscow on Wednesday, the head of the Russian Space Agency, Igor Komarov.

Earlier, located on the ISS Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and US astronaut Scott Kelly said that the spacecraft “Progress” started falling, and to communicate with them is no longer possible. According to Kelly, unmanaged space truck will soon enter the planet’s atmosphere.

Meanwhile, as stated Komarov, the Russian Space Agency are now trying to organize a controlled descent from orbit spacecraft.

The wreckage unmanaged “progress” could collapse at any point of the earth between the 52- parallels of latitude north and south: in this area – almost all countries south of Canada, Denmark and central Russia, but North extreme south of Chile and Argentina.

As the BBC Russian Service expert, chief editor of “Space News” Igor Marinin, to predict which parts of the ship does not burn in the atmosphere, it is impossible, because all previous ships were returning to Earth in the normal mode – they flooded into the ocean.

However, he said , any part of the ship does not burn in the atmosphere and fall to the ground.

Trouble

From the statement at a press conference the deputy head of “Roskosmos” Alexander Ivanov it can be concluded that the nature of the emergency situation that occurred with the ship, the agency can not yet explain.

According to Ivanov, it happened in the moment of separation of the ship from the last stage of the launch vehicle.

Carrier rocket “Soyuz-2.1A” with cargo spacecraft “Progress-M27M” was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 28 at 10:10 Moscow time. After nine minutes the ship undocked from the third stage of the “Union”.

The docking with the ISS was scheduled for 16:07 Moscow time, however, the ship could not establish a connection.

“Progress” transmitted to Earth telemetry incomplete information. The ship much rotates around its axis.

Reliable ship

The spacecraft “Progress” is used to supply the Soviet, Russian and international space station for nearly 40 years .

They cabin crew “Salyut-6″, “Salyut-7″, “Peace” and the International Space Station.

“Progress” have proven to be very reliable machines – for all operating history from the end of the 1970s of the last century was lost only one machine.

August 24, 2011 “Progress”, which was carrying more than two tonnes of supplies and equipment for the six astronauts working on the ISS, fell all a few minutes after the launch from Baikonur.

How to set a check to the crash of the “progress” has resulted in clogging of the gas generator in the third stage rocket motor “Union”, which caused a decrease in fuel consumption.

Prosecutor General’s Office said then that the accident occurred due to negligence of employees of state enterprises of space industry and the lack of proper control by the Russian Space Agency

Prior to this, in July 2010, the ship “Progress M-06M” with a cargo of food, fuel and other supplies for the ISS crew could not the first attempt to dock to the station because of the failure of automation. The second attempt was successful.

A similar situation occurred in July 2012 when the “Progress M-15M” was unable to dock to the ISS on the first try, but the second attempt was successful.