Malfunction doomed cargo craft headed to space station

MOSCOW — An unmanned Russian cargo spaceship heading to the International Space Station broke up in the atmosphere over Siberia on Thursday because of an unspecified malfunction, the Russian space agency said.

The Progress MS-04 cargo craft broke up at an altitude of 118 miles over the remote Russian Tuva region in Siberia that borders Mongolia, Roscosmos said in a statement.

Most of the space ship’s debris burnt up as it entered the atmosphere, but some fell to Earth over what it called an uninhabited area.

Local people reported seeing a flash of light and hearing a loud thud west of the regional capital of Kyzyl, more than 2,200 miles east of Moscow, the Tuva government was quoted as saying Thursday by the Interfax news agency.

The Progress cargo ship had lifted off at 8:51 p.m. local time from Russia’s space launch complex in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, to deliver 2.5 metric tons of fuel, water, food and supplies.

It was set to dock with the space station Saturday.

Roscosmos said the craft was operating normally before it stopped transmitting data 383 seconds after the launch. The Russian space agency would not describe the malfunction, saying its experts were looking into it.

This is the third botched launch of a Russian spacecraft in two years. A Progress cargo ship plunged into the Pacific Ocean in May 2015, and a Proton-M rocket carrying an advanced satellite broke up in the atmosphere in May 2014.

But Roscosmos and NASA said the crash would have no impact on the operations of the space lab, home to a six-member crew, including three cosmonauts from Russia, two NASA astronauts and one from the European Union.