GORNO-ALTAISK, September 23 (Itar-Tass) —— The Roscosmos group on Friday discontinued the search in the Republic of Altai for the debris of the Progress M-12M cargo craft, which crashed in the region on August 24.
The search party, based in the village of Artybash, the Turachak district, for all the time, will return to Moscow later this Friday, the group head, Roscosmos department chief in charge of searching Dmitry Gurov told Itar-Tass. According to him, the search for Progress fragments will continue during launch and post-launch operations in the officially designated RP-327 area of fall of used stages of rockets, launched from Baikonur. It is adjacent to the Choya, Turachak, Chemal, Ongudai and Ulagan districts in the Republic of Altai.
On September 14, on the southern extremity of Lake Teletskoye, the Ulagan district, the Roscosmos party found a fragment of an aluminium container with the inscription "ration" from the spacecraft. The next day, specialists of the Energia rocket and space corporation confirmed the fragment was from the Progress. But nothing else from the spacecraft was found later. The group found and took away only fragments of old spacecraft launched from Baikonur in previous years, as it is the area of space debris fall.
The republic’s department of the federal public health control service (Rospotrebnadzor) sent specialists to the Teletskoye lake site. They established that there was no chemical pollution of the area.
The accident occurred in the sky over the northeastern region of the Altai Republic on August 24 when a Soyuz-U rocket with the Progress was launched. The rocket engines failed 325 seconds after the launch when the third stage worked.