MOSCOW — Russia’s top space officials announced Wednesday that they would scuttle an unmanned cargo spacecraft that is orbiting the Earth after it malfunctioned on its way to resupply the International Space Station.
Trying to continue the mission of the Progress M27-M cargo ship, which malfunctioned Tuesday shortly after takeoff, could endanger those on board the space station, Igor Komarov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said in public remarks.
After a day of rumors about the scale of the damage to the cargo ship, which is carrying three tons of supplies, including fuel and food, Mr. Komarov said it was not possible for it to continue its flight and dock safely with the space station. “We have discovered a lack of containment in the main engine block,” he said.
While Russia’s aerospace industry has had some embarrassments in recent years, in particular the failure of the Phobos-Grunt mission to one of Mars’s moons in 2012, it has been known for reliable flights between the space station and Earth. The resupply mission was seen as routine.
The Progress M27-M cargo freighter was launched into space on the back of a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The problems began almost immediately after it detached from the rocket. First, the cargo ship stopped sending telemetric data.
Later Tuesday, it was revealed that the ship was spinning uncontrollably, rotating at 90 degrees a second. NASA released video from on board showing the Earth flying by as the ship gyrated.
The ship was supposed to dock with the space station just six hours after liftoff, but the docking was delayed as scientists wrestled to control it.
Mr. Komarov said that officials were not sure what had gone wrong. He said he believed the problem was related to the ship’s detaching from the rocket, while NASA said the problem appeared to involve the antenna, which cut off communication.
NASA and Roscosmos are monitoring the cargo vehicle, which they expect to fall from orbit in the next few weeks.
A NASA spokesman, Dan Huot, said it was too early to know whether the entire craft would burn up in the atmosphere. But any falling fragments would most likely land in the ocean and pose little risk, NASA said.
The loss of supplies will not endanger the six astronauts aboard the space station, which was last supplied on April 17 by a SpaceX Dragon capsule and has enough food, water and oxygen to last four to six months, according to NASA. Its next shipment is planned for June 19.
In the 59 times that the Russian cargo spacecraft has launched for the space station, it has failed only once before. In 2011, a Progress model crashed into a Siberian forest five minutes after blastoff because of a failure in its propulsion system.
The Progress failure on Tuesday is the second in six months for space station supply missions. In October, an Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences exploded six seconds after it lifted off in Virginia.
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