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Report on find of fuel tank of spacecraft crashed in Altai denied

The only fragment of a Progress ship discovered in the Altai Republic was a fragment of an aluminium container with food rations for cosmonauts

GORNO-ALTAISK, September 22 (Itar-Tass) —— The Federal Space Agency Roscomos denies a report about the discovery of a fuel tank of the Progress cargo spaceship that crashed in the Altai highlands.

“The only fragment of a Progress ship discovered in the Altai Republic was a fragment of an aluminium container with food rations for cosmonauts,” the press service of the Altai Republic reported in Gorno-Altaisk on Thursday with reference to Roscosmos. “No other space fragment has been found.” The space agency has thus denied reports of some media that a fuel tank of the Progress ship that crashed on August 24 was discovered in the Altai highlands.

Dmitry Gurov, the head of the search group of Roscosmos in the Altai Republic, said that search operations were not conducted on Thursday because of the non-flying weather. The order to stop the search has not come from the space agency either. The search for debris of the Progress was carried on in the past who days simultaneously with usual work for the follow-up of the launch of Proton-M booster that took place on September 21. Experts discovered several fragments from previous launches. This space debris will be collected to be utilized.

The department of the Federal Service for the Protection of Consumer Rights and Human Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor) for the Altai Republic continues the monitoring on schedule. The collection of samples will be concluded in late October. According to the latest information, the analysis of the samples from the environment in the Ulagan and Turocak districts of the Altai Republic showed no presence of harmful chemical substances. There have been no occasions of people turning to medical institutions in the Altai Republic with signs of acute chemical poisoning. Research will be conducted in the Choisky district next week. Monitoring in the republic’s districts will be resumed in spring, after the ice cover melts.