An uncrewed Russian spacecraft meant to resupply the International Space Station has been lost. Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, says that communication with the spacecraft ended 382 seconds into the flight. The third stage of the Soyuz rocket, which helps propel the cargo ship to its final orbit, reportedly shut down "earlier than planned" according to NASA's live broadcast of the mission.
The Progress MS-04 spacecraft never made it into proper orbit without that full third stage burn. Instead, gravity took hold and it burned up in the Earth's atmosphere sometime in the hours after the 9:51AM ET launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Reports of explosions and fireballs in the sky of Tuva, Russia around the same time.
The ship was carrying more than 5,300 pounds (2,400 kilograms) of cargo, including food, water, propellant, and other supplies. NASA schedules cargo flights in such a way that a loss of one or two missions can't directly endanger the crew aboard the space station. "Our astronauts and the Russian cosmonauts are safe aboard the station," NASA wrote in a blog post. "Consumables aboard the station are at good levels."
The data received from the spacecraft is not enough to say clearly what went wrong with the Progress MS-04 during the separation of the rocket's third stage, NASA also said.
The navigation equipment of Progress did open, but there is no information whether its solar batteries are functioning properly, the US space agency added.
The data received from the spacecraft is not enough to say clearly what went wrong with the Progress MS-04 during the separation of the rocket's third stage, NASA also said.
A likely sighting of the troubled #Soyuz/#ProgressMS04 over city of Biysk in Southern Russia. pic.twitter.com/Cmi70QOS6I
— Anatoly Zak (@RussianSpaceWeb) December 1, 2016
The navigation equipment of Progress did open, but there is no information whether its solar batteries are functioning properly, the US space agency added.
The next ISS resupply mission is supposed to launch next week, with another one scheduled for early 2017. Roscosmos is one of four entities capable of resupplying the ISS. The Japanese space agency will launch next week's cargo mission. Two private spaceflight companies — SpaceX and Orbital ATK — have contracts with NASA that allow them to send cargo to the space station. A third company will join them in 2019.
