- What goes up... (Image: Tsenki/Roscosmos)
- dn27434-1_300[1].jpg (7.62 KiB) Viewed 3780 times
News that a Russian spacecraft is spiralling out of control and plunging to Earth may have alarmed you this morning, but don't worry – the situation is more like a missed parcel delivery than a Hollywood apocalypse movie.
The spacecraft in question, an uncrewed Progress capsule, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan yesterday morning and should have arrived at the International Space Station six hours later.
The Russians launch these spacecraft to the ISS every few months, carrying regular deliveries of food, water and other supplies needed to keep the station and the astronauts on board in good health.
Normally these missions go off without a hitch, but this latest one, designated Progress M-27M, failed to deploy its antennas after launch. As a result, mission controllers have been unable to make full contact with the spacecraft.
Video downloaded yesterday shows that it is currently spinning out of control. If the Russians can't make contact, the spacecraft should return to Earth in the next few days and burn up in the atmosphere.
Well-stocked space station
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That doesn't mean you should be on the lookout for falling debris though – Progress capsules, like most of the spacecraft that deliver supplies to the ISS, are designed to burn up once they have delivered their cargo. For M-27M, this will just happen earlier than expected.
Astronauts on board the ISS aren't at risk either, as the station keeps reserve supplies for exactly this eventuality. The last delivery, made by a SpaceX Dragon capsule a couple of weeks ago , left the astronauts with enough food to last until September. SpaceX is due to launch another Dragon in June, so supplies shouldn't be a problem.
The Russians had planned another Progress launch in August, but may be delayed while they investigate the underlying cause of this failure, to avoid the same thing happening again. The last Progress mission that failed to make its delivery was in 2011, but that was actually due to the Soyuz rocket that lofts the craft into orbit.
The same rocket is currently the only way for humans to get into orbit, so that failure threatened to leave the ISS unoccupied while the Russians investigated, but in the end everything worked out fine.