MOSCOW, April 29. /TASS/. The Progress M-27M cargo spacecraft can’t dock with the International Space Station, variants of its dumping are being considered, Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos chief Igor Komarov said Wednesday.
"The propulsion installation unit was found to have no airtightness. In connection with this, the transport cargo spacecraft’s further flight and safe docking with the ISS do not seem possible," Komarov told journalists.
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"Control of onboard systems of the transport cargo spacecraft is being kept. Further variants of dumping the spacecraft are being worked out," he said.
Komarov said telemetric data transmission from the Progress M-27M cargo spacecraft stopped 1.5 seconds ahead of its separation from the carrier rocket.
"The space launch and flight were passing normally, however, 1.5 seconds before the scheduled separation of the spacecraft from the rocket’s third stage, telemetric data disappeared. It was later established that the cargo ship’s separation took place on time," he said.
After that, Komarov said, some systems failed. It was in particular established that the spacecraft was spinning at the speed of 90 degrees per second. It and the third stage of Soyuz-2.1a were at the so-called disposal orbit at a distance of 30 kilometers from each other.