Moscow loses control of the shuttle Progress: rush on … – Il Sole 24 Ore

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This article was published April 29, 2015 at 15:11.
The last change is the April 29, 2015 at 16:27.

The Russians admit: they have lost control. And the spacecraft Progress M-27M, which on Tuesday was unable to dock to the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit around the Earth, is plummeting. “He’s coming out of orbit – said the agency Ria Novosti a Russian space industry source linked – and the pace of the fall will vary according to weather and the solar wind. Only in the last 24 hours the shuttle has lost tens of meters above sea level. ”

The Mission Control has not lost all hope of recovering the shuttle, said the agency Interfax spokesman Sergei Talalasov. Losing it would cost 5 billion rubles, 89 million euro. Progress – traveling without crew – was launched Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and was supposed to reach the ISS after six hours. But after disconnecting from the missile that brought her, Progress would put the wrong orbit: the Mission Control has stopped receiving data.

Failed all attempts to restart the engines and start a corrective: “We will be able to calculate the exact date and place of the falling fragments that survive the impact with the atmosphere only a few hours before” , the source added. For a second Russian news agency, Interfax, other sources have fixed the fall between 7 and 11 May. Mockery of fate: Progress could ruin the big party that the Kremlin prepares for months to May 9, the Grand Parade of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. And in fact on board the cargo space, along with two and a half tons of food supplies, fuel and scientific equipment, there is also a replica of the Soviet flag hoisted on Berlin by the Red Army in 1945. The way to the Russian cosmonauts on the ISS to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Victory: experienced this year with greater emphasis than in the past because the exaltation of the Russian role in the defeat of Nazism is to cover the insulation of these months, linked to the crisis in Ukraine.

While waiting for the return to the scene of the US shuttles, after the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the links with the orbiting station were only task of the Russians. Both NASA that the Russian Space Agency have made it clear that the six members currently on board the orbiting station have enough supplies, and are not in danger.

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