Faulty spacecraft set to crash in Pacific

Russia's out of control spacecraft is likely to burn up before crashing into the Pacific. Photo / AP

An unmanned Russian spacecraft is spinning out of control and is set to plummet to Earth next week.

The Progress M-27M spacecraft, carrying three tonnes of supplies for astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), entered an "uncontrolled descent" yesterday and is expected to plunge to Earth sometime between May 7 and 11.

Russia was forced to abandon the $50 million resupply mission after engineers struggled to regain control of the ship when it spun out of control soon after launch on Wednesday.

Igor Komarov, the head of Russia's Roskosmos space agency, said: "Additional tests today revealed that further controlled flight and safe docking with the ISS is impossible.

"We're working on options for scuttling the ship."

Progress M-27M blasted off from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket.

But the flight ran into difficulty when telemetric communications failed just a second and a half before separation of the rocket's third stage, causing it to enter an erroneous orbit.

It was spinning through space at an altitude of 198km, having already lost several kilometres of altitude.

Alexander Ivanov, Komarov's deputy, declined to predict exactly where the ship would fall, but said calculations suggested it would re-enter the atmosphere "somewhere over the Pacific" sometime between May 5 and May 7.

The crash is unlikely to pose any threat to residents or trans-Pacific shipping, as the craft is expected to burn up as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere.

- Telegraph Group Ltd