Russian Progress spaceship probably exploded, agencies say

An accident as the capsule was detaching from its rocket likely led to it getting lost in space, say Russian officials

A Russian Soyuz-U booster carrying an unmanned cargo spacecraft Progress atop rises on a launch pad at the Russian leased Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome, on October 29, 2012 (Getty)

The lost Russian capsule could have run into problems after an explosion as it attempted to detach from its rocket, according to Russian agencies.

The ship is currently spinning around space and officials are unable to make contact with it, after it went out of control on its way to take supplies to the International Space Station.

Analysis of fragments and debris from the separation indicate that an explosion may have happened and thrown the Progress into the wrong orbit, according to Russian news agency Interfax.

Officials are still unable to say what caused the problems for certain, and don’t know why it might have exploded. They intend to have a full report of what went wrong in mid-May, previous reports have suggested.

When authorities are able to collect more information, they will input that into computer models that will be able to work out what was most likely to have happened to the ship, they said.

Preliminary reports were presented yesterday, When Russian space agency officials said that the report should be finished before May 13.

The problems occurred when flight controllers attempted to detach the capsule — which was carrying supplies for those onboard the International Space Station — from the rocket that carried it out of the Earth’s atmosphere. While it is clear that the capsule ended up in the wrong orbit, officials are still not sure what happened to trigger the problems.

Experts expect the capsule to head back towards Earth sometime between May 7 and May 10. It has lost power and is being steadily pulled back towards us by gravity.

When the capsule comes back into the Earth’s atmosphere it is likely to burn up, leaving only fragments and debris if anything at all. Even those are likely to cause very little risk to anyone on Earth, since it is statistically far more likely that they will land in the sea or on uninhabited land.