A Russian rocket and cargo ship have crashed in a failed attempt to reach the International Space Station. The failure will halt crewed launches to the space station at least temporarily, since they rely on the same Soyuz family of rockets as the one that failed.
The Soyuz-U rocket lifted off at 1300 GMT on Wednesday, carrying a Progress cargo ship intended to bring supplies to the space station.
But an unknown problem caused the Soyuz to shut down its third-stage engine prematurely, so that it never reached orbit. NASA says Russian space officials told them it crashed in Russia's Altai region, which is near Kazakhstan.
The Progress vehicle contained 2.9 tonnes of supplies, including water and food. But NASA says the space station's six-person crew is in no danger of running out of critical items anytime soon.
They have enough food and other consumables to last at least until Europe's cargo ship, the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), is scheduled to arrive. That is currently set for February, but possibly it could arrive as late as May, Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station manager, said in a news briefing.
Even without Soyuz flights, planned ATV flights as well as flights of Japan's HTV cargo vehicle could keep supplies from running out through the end of 2012, he said.
If there were a disruption to these flights, bathroom supplies might be the first thing to run out, he said: "If I was counting on which consumables would drive us, it might be potty parts in the end."
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