A Russian spacecraft is spinning out of control in orbit around the Earth. Conflicting reports are leaving more questions than answers for those trying to piece together the events leading to the mission failure.
A Progress M-27M cargo craft, designed to deliver 6,000 pounds of goods to the International Space Station, was scheduled to dock with the orbiting outpost on Tuesday, April 28. Controllers lost communication with the spacecraft after its launch.
Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, originally announced it expected a delay of up to two days before the cargo craft mated with the ISS. This would have moved scheduled docking from April 28 to April 30.
"There are some problems with the data telemetry. They are being worked on by Roscosmos specialists," Russian space officials announced in a brief statement to the press.
Later on in the day, the Russian news service Tass announced the delay is likely to be indefinite, as the vehicle is unable to receive instructions from the ground, and was only returning data intermittently.
"The spacecraft is currently very quickly and uncontrollably turning on its axis, one turn in just several seconds. The Mission Control Centre's commands are not reaching the spacecraft and telemetric data are also transmitted erratically. The docking, originally planned for April 30, has been postponed indefinitely," said a source with Roscosmos.
The Kurs navigation system, essential to dock the cargo ship to the ISS, contains the two antennae which failed to deploy, according to Tass. This system collects information on the distance between the Progress 59 cargo craft and resupply ship, as well as the attitude of the vehicles, and relays that data to internal processors as well as controllers on the ground.
The M-27M resupply ship was launched on April 28 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Mission engineers are attempting to identify the cause of the spacecraft failure. The problem could be electrical or mechanical in nature.
"[T]he Russian flight control team issued commands through the telemetry system onboard the spacecraft in an attempt to receive confirmation that navigation and rendezvous systems had deployed. But, due to sporadic telemetry from Progress 59, inconclusive data, and trouble uplinking commands to the spacecraft, controllers were unable to confirm the status of the systems," NASA officials reported in a mission update.
Questions surround the events that took place during the flight. If the M-27M cargo ship did fail in reaching the proper orbit, the delivery of thousands of pounds of food and supplies scheduled to reach the astronauts aboard the ISS could be lost. This potential loss follows the explosion of an uncrewed U.S. cargo ship last October from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia just after takeoff. More than 5,000 pounds of cargo and supplies, including research hardware, student experiments, spare parts, food and crew supplies, 32 small nanosatellites and other gear, were lost in the mishap.
In that instance, a Progress M-25M/57P spacecraft Russian Progress cargo craft blasted off from Kazakhstan shortly after the failed U.S. launch on Oct. 29, 2014, and successfully delivered 5,793 pounds of rocket fuel, water, air, crew supplies and other equipment to the orbital lab complex.
Currently, the crew aboard the International Space Station consists of two Americans - Scott Kelly and Terry Vitts, Samantha Cristoforetti of Italy, and three Russian cosmonauts - Gennady Padalka, Mikhail Korniyenko and Anton Shkaplerov.
