Problem Occurs During Launch of Progress 65 Resupply Mission to the ISS – Vehicle Burns up in Atmosphere (with video)
“A launch that seemingly was going perfect, quickly became a concern to Russian mission controllers when the third stage of the Soyuz rocket apparently shut down early, possibly leaving the Progress resupply spacecraft in a improper orbit. To make matters worse mission controllers have been unable to confirm at this point if the solar arrays are fully deployed. Contact was lost at T+ 6:23 just before it was supposed to achieve orbit.”

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

8 replies on “Progress Launch Fails”

  1. It must be an omen.
    Progress fails in ISS resupply
    Antares cygnus lost in ISS resupply
    Falcon/Dragon lost in ISS resupply
    Atlas V/cygnus came within 1.5 seconds of failure in ISS resupply

    JAXA HTV looks to have ducked the Curse of the ISS (so far)
    ESA also finished ATV flights in the nick of time.

      1. While still recovering from its Antares failure, Orbital – as contractor for the Cygnus resupply craft as well – was still under the contractual gun to deliver the goods to the ISS, and so ended up contracting with ULA to launch two Cygnus missions.

        The second one – OA-6 – had an issue with its 1st stage booster firing, which prematurely cut off ~6-8 seconds (I think), and so the Centaur upper stage had to carry the burden further up and longer, in order to make the Cygnus’ on-target orbit. The problem Yale was alluding to was that after Cygnus separation, the Centaur only had enough propellant remaining for a burn of ~2 seconds — barely enough to start its disposal deorbit, but unfortunately, resulting in it impacting the ocean well outside its designated impact box.

        Had the Centaur run out of juice before separation, the Cygnus would have been in a less than optimal orbit, and would then have to get to the ISS by burning a more of its own thrusters. The mission would have been at risk, but not necessarily a failure (at least not of the blow-up & crash magnitude the others saw),

        1. As I understand it that if the centaur ran out of fuel just a tinier bit earlier, the cygnus would have its perigee within the atmosphere and would not have survived. From that spaceflight101 article:

          Had the RD-180 engine shut one second earlier than it did, Centaur would not have been able to compensate and Cygnus would have ended up in a lower orbit. With Shutdown another 1.3 seconds earlier, there would not have been a mission for Cygnus as perigee would have remained within the atmosphere, even when using all of Centaur’s performance.

    2. Maybe spaceflight is really hard, and everyone needs to always pay attention (from parts suppliers to launch control teams) and not slack off (i.e. “well, it’s pretty easy as nothing’s gone wrong before.”)

  3. I’d be quite worried about whether this failure could also happen on a Soyuz flight, considering the commonalities between Soyuz and Progress. Waiting for James Oberg to comment…

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