Russian cargo ship bound for the ISS explodes after launch from Kazakhstan

A Russian cargo ship headed for the International Space Station has exploded shortly after launch from Kazakhstan. The unmanned supply ship was carrying rocket fuel, food, water and a new spacesuit and contact was lost six minutes after take-off and two minutes before it was due to arrive in orbit.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 2 December 2016.

Russia's Roscosmos space agency has revealed that the incident occurred "about 190km (118 miles) above the rugged, uninhabited, mountainous territory of the Republic of Tyva and most of the fragments were burned in the dense layers of the atmosphere".
The cargo ship had been scheduled to arrive at the ISS on Saturday but, its non arrival "not affect the normal operations of the ISS systems and the subsistence of the station's crew".
Incidentally, this incident is the second failed launch of a Progress cargo ship within two years. In April 2015 a Progress ship disintegrated as it fell to Earth - this failure was blamed on a problem with a Soyuz rocket. As a result of that Russia suspended all space travel for nearly three months and the astronauts in ISS were forced to remain there for an extra month.
Russia sends at least three such supply ships every year to ISS and they plummet back to Earth after delivering the stores and burn up in the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org


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