The Soyuz rocket blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying the Progress 65 Spacecraft. An anomaly has occurred during the thi...
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| The Soyuz rocket blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying the Progress 65 Spacecraft. |
An anomaly has occurred during the third stage separation of the Soyuz-U launch vehicle, carrying the Progress 65/MS-04 cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station.
The Soyuz rocket was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:51 a.m. EST (8:51 p.m. Baikonur time).
Russian Space Agency Roscosmos said the flight was normal until 382 seconds. After 382 seconds, telemetry data from the Progress MS-04 was stopped and radar stations did not detect the cargo vehicle on the calculated orbit.
According to preliminary information, the MS-04 exploded at an altitude of about 190 km over remote and unpopulated mountainous area of the Republic of Tyva. The most of cargo spacecraft fragments was burned in the dense atmosphere.
The spacecraft was carrying more than 2.6 tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the Expedition 50 crew aboard the ISS.
NASA and Roscosmos said the Expedition 50 crew is safe aboard the ISS and consumables aboard the station are at good levels, and the failure does affect normal operations of the ISS and the life of the station crew.
An Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV)-6 from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is scheduled to launch to the space station on Friday, Dec. 9
NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) were launched in their Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft at 3:20 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17 (2:20 a.m. Baikonur time, Nov. 18).
They docked to the ISS on Saturday, after orbiting the Earth for approximately two days, joining the other 3 crew members of the Expedition 50 who was arrived in ISS in October 2016.
The failure happened when 50th anniversary of the first Soyuz launch on November 28, 1966, was commemorated.
Over the last 50 years, the Soyuz have underwent through 10 upgrades. This was the 22th failure of the most popular Soyuz-U (11A511U) version, which had achieved a remarkable 787 successful launches.
Russia plans to phase out the Soyuz-U LVs by next year.
