Progress M-27M (), identified by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

as Progress 59P, was a

Progress Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. It is central to the philosophy of progressivism, which interprets progress as the set of advancements in technology, science, and social organization effic ...

spacecraft used by

Roscosmos The State Corporation for Space Activities "Roscosmos", commonly known simply as Roscosmos (), is a State corporation (Russia), state corporation of the Russian Federation responsible for space science, space flights, List of space agencies, c ...

in an unsuccessful attempt to resupply the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

(ISS) in 2015.

Launch

Progress M-27M was the 27th

Progress-M Progress-M (, GRAU indices 11F615A55 and 11F615A60), also known as Progress 7K-TGM, is a Russian, previously Soviet spacecraft which is used to resupply space stations. It is a variant of the Progress spacecraft, originally built in the late 1 ...

11F615A60 spacecraft, with the

serial number A serial number (SN) is a unique identifier used to ''uniquely'' identify an item, and is usually assigned incrementally or sequentially. Despite being called serial "numbers", they do not need to be strictly numerical and may contain letters ...

427. It was built by

RKK Energia S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation "Energia" () is a Russian manufacturer of spacecraft and space station components. Its name is derived from the Russian word for energy and is also named for Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the first chief o ...

and was operated by the

. This was the second time the upgraded Soyuz-2.1a rocket was used for an ISS mission launch. The spacecraft was launched on 28 April 2015 at 07:09:50 UTC from the

Baikonur Cosmodrome The Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport operated by Russia within Kazakhstan. Located in the Kazakh city of Baikonur, it is the largest operational space launch facility in terms of area. All Russian Human spaceflight, crewed spaceflights are l ...

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

. Progress M-27M was launched with a planned six-hour rendezvous profile to the ISS. During the launch the spacecraft achieved

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

, but a malfunction occurred near the end of the upper stage burn shortly before the separation of the Progress spacecraft, generating a debris field and leaving the spacecraft spinning and unable to be fully controlled. The spacecraft was deemed to be a total loss.

Cargo

The spacecraft carried of food, fuel and supplies, including of propellant, of oxygen, of water, and of spare parts, supplies and experiment hardware for the six members of the Expedition 43 crew aboard the International Space Station.

Spacecraft failure

After reaching

, but before separation of the spacecraft from the rocket, communication with the vessel was lost. Ground controllers only received brief telemetry shortly after that confirmed spacecraft separation as well as the deployment of the solar panels, but were not able to confirm the deployment of rendezvous antennas of the

KURS KURS (1040 kHz) is an AM radio station broadcasting a Spanish-language Catholic radio format. The station is licensed to San Diego, California and is owned by El Sembrador Ministries. KURS is an affiliate of ''ESNE Radio''. ESNE had been he ...

system. Initially controllers tried to fall back to the plan of making a two-day rendezvous with the ISS, but this was also abandoned after ground stations were not able to communicate with the spacecraft during the next three orbits. During its fourth orbit, video released from an onboard camera used for docking showed that the spacecraft was spinning wildly in space. Further efforts on that day to establish communications with the spacecraft were unsuccessful. Two more communication sessions were attempted on 28 April to regain control of the spacecraft, but did not succeed. On 29 April, Roscosmos officially announced that the spacecraft was out of control and its orbit would eventually decay to fall back into

Earth's atmosphere The atmosphere of Earth is composed of a layer of gas mixture that surrounds the Earth's planetary surface (both lands and oceans), known collectively as air, with variable quantities of suspended aerosols and particulates (which create weathe ...

, with multiple systems suffering from failure and the main engine's fuel lines depressurized. The spacecraft was expected to disintegrate in the Earth's atmosphere between 7 and 11 May 2015. On the same day, the United States'

NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD ; , CDAAN), known until March 1981 as the North American Air Defense Command, is a combined organization of the United States and Canada that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and pr ...

reported that 44 pieces of

debris Debris (, ) is rubble, wreckage, ruins, litter and discarded waste, garbage/refuse/trash, scattered remains of something destroyed, or, as in geology, large rock fragments left by a melting glacier, etc. Depending on context, ''debris'' can ref ...

"in the vicinity of the resupply vehicle and its upper stage rocket body" were being tracked by space tracking systems. Currently, various Russian sources reported that the potential cause of the anomaly may be related to the upper stage rocket

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ge ...

shutdown or with the separation of the Progress spacecraft from the upper stage. A representative of the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

claimed that debris in the area indicated a blast.

Given he altitude of the debrisand the fact that Progress was found 30 to 40 kilometres above its intended orbit, we can say with confidence that there was some kind of blast at the moment of separation from the third stage of the rocket".

On 8 May 2015 at 02:20 UTC, the spacecraft underwent destructive atmospheric reentry between 350 and 1300 km off the South American coast, west of Chile.

Investigation

On 1 June 2015, Roscosmos announced the results of an investigation into the cause of the failure, attributing it to a "design peculiarity" in the linkage between the Soyuz 2.1a rocket and the spacecraft, related to the "frequency dynamic characteristics" of the linkage. Postflight investigation found that the failure was caused by an unforeseen design flaw in the new Soyuz 2.1a Blok I stage — the propellant tanks were shaped differently than in the older

Soyuz-U Soyuz-U ( GRAU index: 11A511U) was a Soviet and later Russian expendable medium-lift launch vehicle designed by the TsSKB design bureau and constructed at the Progress factory in Samara, Russia. The ''U'' designation stands for ''unified' ...

booster, which ended up producing resonant vibration when attached to the Progress spacecraft. The normal flight program would vent out the

nitrogen Nitrogen is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a Nonmetal (chemistry), nonmetal and the lightest member of pnictogen, group 15 of the periodic table, often called the Pnictogen, pnictogens. ...

pressure gas from the Blok I tanks following spacecraft separation, but engine cutoff produced a hammer effect that sent a shock wave through the stack, rupturing the propellant tanks and blasting the Progress into a much higher than planned orbit, while also leaving it in an uncontrollable spin and having suffered structural damage from being struck by flying booster debris. The cost of the loss of the mission was valued at 2.59 billion rubles (US$50.7 million).

References

External links