(Image Source: BBC)

BY YUTAKA HAYASHI

You're watching multisource science video news analysis from Newsy. 

In Russia, the unmanned Soyuz rocket, propelling the Progress cargo ship -- crashed after an engine failure, making it the third launch failure in 7 days.  It was carrying supplies for the International Space Station.

According to a report from NASA:

“At 5 minutes and 25 seconds into flight, the Soyuz rocket experienced a third-stage engine shutdown due to an anomaly. Given the trajectory and energy, the Progress did not reach orbit and landed in the Altai Region of Russia.”

Fortunately, the craft crash landed in an unpopulated area according to RT:

“It was 40 kilometers (24.8 miles) from the nearest village that it fell, and Roscosmos has said that it’s very unlikely that anyone is hurt, although they’ll make a full inspection of the area shortly. And the craft itself was unmanned so there was no crew inboard. “

 

A Wall Street Journal correspondent says this launch failure comes as a surprise as the Soyuz Launch Vehicle, combined with the Progress Cargo Ship -- had an excellent launch record -- until now.
 

“..for at least 3 decades this combination has served the Space Station and its international partners well, and therefore the experts are betting that the engineers will get to the bottom of what happened in this third stage failure and the hope is that it’ll get back to launching regularly to the space station.”

According to the New York Times, this will not have an immediate effect on the astronauts at the International Space Station, but it may affect their research.
 

“…three crew members may have to return to Earth in one of the Soyuz capsules docked at the station by October at the latest. Without replacements, that would leave only three people to operate the station, greatly reducing the time they could devote to running experiments.”

The BBC notes -- the end of NASA’s shuttle program, along with the recent rocket failures could mean trouble for the International Space Station.
 

“What it does draw attention to is perhaps how vulnerable the International Space Station Project is without the shuttle, because should anything more serious go wrong, then you need a vehicle as large as the space shuttle to do a space walk from to repair the space station from so you can recolonize it. And without that kind of capability, which we just don’t have now, you might end up losing the space station all together.”

 

Voice of America reports -- authorities are searching for the remains of the rocket.

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Transcript by Newsy.