A crash is imminent; question is where.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BENGALURU: An unmanned Russian cargo spacecraft is descending its way to Earth after the earth station lost control of the vehicle which was supposed to deliver bio supplies for the crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
According to sources, reported RT, the spacecraft started showing anomalies soon after the take-off and now it is spinning vigorously in the orbit. A Russian Space official was quoted by AFP saying “It has started descending. It has nowhere else to go.”
The Russian authorities have given up all hopes of regaining control of the space craft and are soon expected to convene a press conference where more information about the status of the space craft will be revealed.
The mission of M-27M Progress spacecraft to deliver supplies to sustain human presence in orbit has come to a premature end but, fortunately, the astronauts aboard the ISS have enough food to sustain themselves until another cargo reaches them soon. Even so, the failed mission might have hurt the sentiments of astronauts as the supplies included some of the items sent by their loved ones.
As of now there is no confirmation about when the descending spacecraft will make its way back to Earth nor do we know the exact location of its touch down. But, it is expected that the dead module will hit the earth by the second week of May and scientists hope that the module, carrying 2.5 tons of supplies will burn out before it makes impact with the earth. If that doesn’t happen the impact can possibly cause damage.
The module named Progress M-27M was sent to the orbit on Tuesday in a Soyuz rocket but soon after the successful launch the ground control lost communication of the vessel which started spinning violently in the orbit.
Nasa said it has “1,940 pounds (880 kilos) of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 926 pounds of water, and 3,128 pounds of spare parts, supplies and scientific experiment hardware.” They also added that none of these supplies was critical for the US section of the ISS, and that the astronauts have plenty of provisions, enough to last for months.
Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian Deputy Prime Minister who is in charge of the aerospace industry, wrote on twitter “We’re all worrying about our cargo spacecraft.”
The Russian Space Agency has suffered a series of setbacks, noticeably losing expensive satellites during some of their latest missions and a similar failure of Progress supply mission in 2011.