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IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration

Progress 59 spacecraft burns up over Pacific

• http://www.gizmag.com, By David Szondy

According to the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), the freighter reentered the Earth's atmosphere at 10:04 pm EDT. Launched 10 days ago, it failed to reach the International Space Station (ISS) due to a malfunction that prevented mission control from establishing contact shortly after launch.

On Thursday evening, Roscosmos tweeted: "TGK 'Progress M-27M' ceased to exist at 5:04 MSK over the central part of the Pacific Ocean." This was later confirmed by the US Air Force tracking at 8:34 pm PDT.

Because Progress was making an uncontrolled reentry, it wasn't possible to precisely predict when or where it would burn up, and there were concerns that there was a remote chance that some fragments of the spacecraft might survive reentry. However, the craft's breaking up over the Pacific means that any surviving fragments landed in water.


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