Russian supply spacecraft crashes after launch

Debris of an unmanned Russian space freighter fell in South Siberia after the spacecraft failed to reach the designated orbit due to a rocket engine failure on Wednesday, officials said on early Thursday.

The wreckage of the Progress M-12M space freighter fell in the Choya District of South Siberia s Altai Republic at around 5.25 p.m. local time on Wednesday, the Ria Novosti news agency reported.

The Russian Progress M-12M was launched aboard the Soyuz-U carrier rocket from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan to deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). The space freighter was scheduled to separate from the carrier rocket at 5:09 p.m. local time when it sent a breakdown report.

The Russian Federal Space Agency, commonly called Roscosmos, said they received a breakdown report from the Progress M-12M before it left the radio coverage zone. Mission Control was unable to receive any telemetry data from the spacecraft after that moment, which was 325 seconds into the flight.

According to the agency, the reported engine failure made it impossible for the spacecraft to achieve the required orbital velocity and it fell down to Earth.

After the Progress spacecraft accident, Russia may fail to deliver crews to the ISS as planned. A source in Russia s space industry told Ria Novosti that scheduled launches of Soyuz rockets are likely to be suspended until the reasons of the accident are established.

After the retirement of the U.S. shuttle fleet earlier this summer, Russian Soyuz craft became the only way for astronauts to reach the ISS until at least the middle of the decade. NASA is paying its Russian counterpart Roscosmos more than $1 billion for crew transport services over the next four years.

The Progress space freighter was set to deliver 2.7 tons of food, medical and scientific equipment, and other items to the ISS. But Roscosmos promised that the supply operation s failure would not seriously affect the ISS crew, saying there s enough food on board to sustain the crew for a "long time." However, a new crew will not be able to replace the current ISS crew on time and they will have to stay at the station longer than planned.