MOSCOW, April 29. /TASS/. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin will on Thursday hold a special meeting to analyze the accident involving the Progress spacecraft, a source in the Russian Military-Industrial Commission’s Board told TASS.
"Deputy premier Rogozin will hold a meeting dedicated to analysis of the emergency situation during the launch of the Progress spacecraft tomorrow in the House of Government," the source said.
The management of the Federal Space Agency Roscosmos and enterprises of Russia’s rocket and space industry will also attend the meeting.
The source said participants will report to the Military-Industrial Commission’s Board on conclusions made during previously conducted analysis of the accident. Besides, proposals will be made on the work of the state commission investigating the loss of control of the spacecraft.
The Progress M-27M cargo spacecraft was launched on April 28 from the Baikonur space center on a Soyuz carrier rocket. The rocket took the spacecraft to a higher orbit than required to dock with the International Space Station (ISS).
After a few unsuccessful attempts to get control of the spacecraft, experts gave up the idea. The Progress was taking food, oxygen and other cargos to the ISS crew.
What happened
Roscosmos admitted Wednesday that the Progress M-27M can’t dock with the orbital station and variants of its dumping are being considered.
Roscosmos chief Igor Komarov said Wednesday that "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."
He said "control of onboard systems of the transport cargo spacecraft" was being kept and "further variants of dumping the spacecraft" were being worked out.
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.