Uncrewed Russian spaceship fails, burns up in atmosphere miles above Siberia
An uncrewed Russian spacecraft carrying hundreds of pounds of supplies for the crew onboard the International Space Station failed to make it to orbit after launch Thursday.
The Progress cargo ship failed about 190 kilometers (118 miles) above a remote part of Siberia, with some of the craft burning up in the atmosphere and other pieces likely making it to the ground.
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The Progress — launched atop a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan — seemed to be functioning well until a little more than 6 minutes into the launch, when Russian mission control unexpectedly lost touch with the spacecraft.
While this failure is a major loss for the space station, the six astronauts and cosmonauts living aboard the orbiting outpost are safe and will still be comfortable without the supplies that the Progress would have provided.
A Japanese cargo spacecraft is expected to fly to the station, resupplying the crewmembers, on Dec. 9, giving them an even larger buffer on food and other needed supplies.
Spaceflight is hard, sorry to hear the news @roscosmos. We are fine up here and will function fine until the next supply spacecraft arrives https://t.co/JP5Ab8wKKa
— Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) December 1, 2016
The U.S. is increasingly reliant on Russia when it comes to spaceflight.
At the moment, NASA astronauts have to fly to the International Space Station aboard Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, which are launched by the same rockets used to send Progress spacecraft into orbit.
NASA has plans to change this in the relatively near future by contracting Boeing and SpaceX to fly astronauts to the Space Station aboard privately built spacecraft. That commercial crew program was expected to begin as early as next year, but delays and changes in the presidential administration could delay that timeline.
