Russian spacecraft Progress comes crashing back to Earth and burns up on re-entry, agency says

The Progress M-27M craft burned through the atmosphere in a fireball on Thursday night, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

It "ceased to exist" at 10.04pm ET on Thursday (2.04am UTC on Friday), the space agency said in a statement. It was moving over the centre of the Pacific at the time, and any fragments that didn’t burn up were believed to have fallen into the ocean.

Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) head Igor Komarov speaks during a press conference on the situation with the Progress M-27M cargo ship in Moscow on 29 April 2015. The unmanned spacecraft launched from Kazakhstan last Tuesday 28 April, but a communications failure occurred shortly after an attempt to dock and control of the craft was lost.

The unmanned cargo ship was supposed to deliver three tonnes of equipment, including food, water, fuel, oxygen and clothing to the six person crew on the International Space Station.

Although the Progress cargo ship has a good track record, this is the second loss of a robotic space freighter in the past six months. Last October, Orbital Sciences Corp suffered an explosion on launch of its cargo ship intended for the orbiting laboratory.

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Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said: "Only a few small parts of elements of its construction could reach the surface of our planet."

There was not believed to be any risk to the astronauts on the International Space Station, who have enough supplies to keep them going until the next expected delivery on 19 June, by the US company SpaceX.

Additional reporting by agencies

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