Russian cargo rocket to International Space Station crashes

An unmanned 'Progress' cargo module of a Russian Soyuz-U rocket carrying 2.9 tons of food and equipment to the International Space Station (ISS) malfunctioned about five minutes after blast off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday and crashed back to earth.

This was the second failure in a row for the Russian space programme after a Breeze-M upper stage of the powerful Proton rocket series malfunctioned Thursday, 18 August, and placed a communications satellite in the wrong orbit.

The Progress M-12M/44P spacecraft that crashed Wednesday was carrying 2,050 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 926 pounds of water, and 2,777 pounds of US and Russian dry cargo.

The accident is not a cause for immediate concern for the ISS itself as the lab complex currently is flush with supplies and equipment delivered to by the shuttle Atlantis in July. That was the shuttle's last mission before being phased out of service.

NASA officials confirmed that the ISS can go several months without supply. In a worst-case scenario, they said, the station could make it to March without any additional cargo.

An immediate cause of concern, however, is the fact an identical capsule, as the one that crashed, will form the third stage of a manned mission to the space station later in September and so it is imperative for the Russians to arrive at a correct analysis as to what went wrong with the cargo mission.