KRASNOYARSK, December 5. /TASS/. Russia’s consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has not found any increased radiation or poisonous chemical substances at the crash site of the Progress cargo spacecraft’s two fragments in the Republic of Tyva in south Siberia, Tyva Head Sholban Kara-ool said on Monday.
"The Rospotrebnadzor branch for Tyva has made all measurements at the site where two fragments of the Progress MS-04 spacecraft were found on the territory of the Ulug-Khemsky district - on the slope of a mountain and near a Nomads tent," the Tyva head wrote on his Facebook page.
"All necessary analyzer devices have been used to measure the presence of chemical substances and samples of the snow cover and water from an open source have been taken. In both cases, no increased ionizing radiation has been found and no chemical substances have been revealed in the air," Kara-ool wrote, adding that measurements would also be made in the courtyard of a house in the village of Eilig-Khem where the spacecraft’s third fragment had been found.
The cargo spacecraft Progress launched on Thursday from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan by a Soyuz-U carrier rocket to deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) was lost at an altitude of 190 km above Tyva. Most of its fragments burned up in the dense layers of the Earth’s atmosphere, the press office of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos said.
The Progress MS-04 spacecraft was expected to deliver about 2.5 tons of various cargoes to the world’s sole orbiter: fuel for the ISS, water and the air for cosmonauts. The spacecraft’s cargo compartment accommodated scientific equipment and spare parts, containers with foodstuffs, clothes, medicines and personal hygiene items.