Thursday, August 25, 2011

Russian Resupply Craft Crashes


A Russian Progress M-12M resupply unmanned capsule crashed 325 seconds into its flight when one stage of the Soyuz-U rocket shut down prematurely. the Progress capsule carried three tons of equipment, food, and fuel. This failure highlights the bottleneck the ISS is operating under with the Shuttle program now finished and SpaceX not yet ready to begin servicing the station. This also means that the crew exchange due September 22 may not take place and the on station crew may have to stay longer than they expected and there are already whispers circulating that the crew may need to be "reduced" to put less stress on the ISS' equipment and supplies.

Gizmodo article

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