Launch of the Soyuz-U launch vehicle with the Progress MS-04 TGC on December 1, 2016. Photo: Roscosmos

On December 1, 2016, the Russian aerospace industry experienced the 11th failure since 2010: this time the Progress MC-04 transport cargo ship was lost . According to Roskosmos, the launch of the Soyuz-U launch vehicle with the Progress MS-04 transport cargo vehicle from the Baikonur cosmodrome took place on December 1 at 5:51 pm Moscow time. After the 382nd second of the flight, the reception of telemetric information ceased. Established controls did not record the functioning of the ship in the estimated orbit.

According to preliminary information, as a result of an emergency situation, the loss of TGCs occurred at an altitude of about 190 km above the inaccessible deserted mountainous territory of the Tyva Republic near the border with Mongolia, and most of the fragments were burned in dense layers of the atmosphere. Now the state commission is analyzing the current emergency situation. In the mountains, the search began for debris.

Causes of the accident: again clogged pipeline?

The state commission investigating the Soyuz-U launch vehicle with the Progress MS-04 cargo vehicle put forward the burnout of the third-stage rocket engine as the main version.
')
A source at TASS reported that the accident could have been caused by pipeline clogging: “Telemetry is being processed now, but due to the fact that a similar accident has already occurred in the past, the pipeline may be clogged, which led to a premature shutdown of the engine,” he said. .

Apparently, the words about a “similar accident” refer to the fall of the Progress M-12M truck, which occurred on August 24, 2011 at the site of the third stage of the Soyuz-U launch vehicle. Then, five days later, the reason for the abnormal operation of the RD-0110 third-stage Soyuz-U engine was announced: the violation of the conditions of the gas generator. After analyzing the telemetry, the commission decided that the violation of the working conditions and the reduction of the engine parameters and its emergency shutdown resulted in a decrease in fuel consumption in the gas generator due to clogging of its supply path. According to members of the commission, the identified manufacturing defect was found to be accidental.

At the same time, independent experts of the rocket and space industry believe that the real cause of the Progress accident cannot be established due to the lack of telemetry data and missile fragments.

Experts from the Voronezh Mechanical Plant (VMZ), which assembled the RD-0110 third-stage engine of the Soyuz-U launch vehicle, were connected to investigate the causes of the accident. The developer of the engine is Voronezh KB "Himavtomatiki".

“We are working on the situation in accordance with the events that have happened ... We are working, like the whole country. And we are worried about the event that took place, ”said Yury Vavilov, acting deputy director for quality at Vyksa, the head of the technical control department.

“Most likely, following the results of the investigation, the revealed fact of poor-quality assembly of the RD-0110 engine will once again be stated, and the bench modeling, which will be carried out after analyzing the existing telemetry, will show which component of the propulsion system was made with violations, ” RIA Novosti source said in the space industry. - Probably, this will be followed by some personnel decisions, and all ready-made engines, including those already installed on Soyuz launch vehicles, will need to be removed, delivered to the enterprise, re-tested, eliminated possible defects during assembly, which will lead to the next transfer of scheduled launches ".

Search for wreckage

Some residents of Sut-Khol and Dzun-Khemchik districts of Tuva saw a bright flash accompanied by a roar on December 1 at about 10 pm

The wreckage of the ship and the launch vehicle must be found in order to clearly establish the causes of the accident and qualify for insurance payments from the Russian insurer. Therefore, in the territory of Tuva, the search for wreckage was immediately organized with the participation of employees of the emergency services of the Republic of Tyva and the fire fighting garrisons of the Emergencies Ministry.

According to the first preliminary information, fragments of a cargo ship fell a kilometer from the village of Ishtia-Khem in the Ulug-Khem district (coordinates of the center of the village are 51 ° 19′16 ″ n. W. 92 ° 28′18 ″ e ). First of all, emergency services moved to the area. This is how the terrain a kilometer around the village looks on satellite photos.





On the morning of December 2, the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Tuva surveyed the territory around the four settlements of the republic in the Ulug-Khem, Cha-Khol and Sut-Khol regions.

Additionally, the head of the Republic of Tyva, Sholban Kara-ool, instructed local residents in the Ulug-Khem district to inspect pastures and shepherds' camps for falling debris from Progress.

In the Crisis Management Center of the Main Directorate of the EMERCOM of Russia in the Republic of Tyva, an operational group of six people and one unit of equipment was organized . The task force receives calls from citizens on the helpline - and verifies the information received, traveling to the specified coordinates, where unmanned aerial vehicles are launched. At the moment, the group is working to no avail, not a single call was confirmed, and the fragments have not yet been found.

Emergency Situations Ministry officials said that the wreckage will now be searched not only in the Ulug-Khem district, but also in the Pii-Khem district. There, too, several times went operational group of rescuers.

“The area of ​​possible fall of debris was determined on a total area of ​​300 square kilometers. The survey by ground groups has been completed, the places of the fall of the fragments have not been fixed, ” said a source in the power structures of Tuva.

The search area is in a mountainous area, which is very difficult to reach. Currently searches are temporarily stopped until December 3. On Saturday, the operation will resume. The radio engineering battalion of the Ministry of Defense Defense of the Russian Federation, whose units are located in the territory of Tuva, will be connected to the search.

Lost cargo will be difficult to recover

The loss of the cargo ship will not affect the normal functioning of the ISS systems and the life of the station crew, the Roscosmos press service said.

Progress MS-04 was supposed to deliver to the ISS about 2.5 tons of various cargoes: fuel for refueling the ISS, water and air for astronauts, scientific equipment and components, containers with food, clothes, medicines and personal care products, an apparatus for production of "kefir" in zero gravity, as well as treats and fruit for the New Year's table.

This is not the first loss of a cargo ship brought by cargo to the ISS, and the loss of most of the cargo is not really a critical event - the Japanese and American cargo ships may well compensate for this loss. According to experts , there will be enough reserves on the ISS until April 2017, even if the crew does not specifically try to save. If you save - that's enough until June 2017.

The nearest launch to the station will be made in a week - December 9th. It will be carried out by the Konotori-6 truck ( H-II Transfer Vehicle , HTV-6) of the Japan Aerospace Agency. The Konotori-6 will be launched from the Japanese Tanegashima space center and will deliver to the ISS, among other things, food, drinking water and new solar batteries. Docking December 13th.

Unfortunately, there were some unique cargoes that could not be reimbursed: “Some things carried by Progress are unique, in particular, the delivery of the first copy of the new spacesuit to work in space - Orlan-ISS” was planned, as well as the greenhouse, in which it was supposed to conduct experiments on the cultivation of wheat and other crops, it will be very difficult to make up for these losses, ” said Alexander Zheleznyakov, academician of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics.

The new spacesuit " Orlan-ISS " (ISS: upgraded, computerized, synthetic) is designed to work in outer space. The suit weighing 110 kg has a working pressure of 40,000 Pa and is designed for independent work in space for 7 hours. The differences of the new spacesuit are the automation of the spacesuit preparation for the spacewalk, the replacement of the rubber casing with the polyurethane to increase the service life (5 years), the automatic thermal control system. The system automatically adjusts the water temperature of the KBO-M in the spacesuit, depending on the load on the astronaut and the work performed. Before going out and while working in open space, the astronauts themselves set the required temperature mode. Provides heat removal up to 300 kcal / hour on average, maximum - up to 600 kcal / hour.


The Orlan-MKS spacesuit

In the Lada-2 greenhouse installation it was planned to grow Triton sweet pepper, wheat and lettuce in orbit. The greenhouse device of a new generation was developed by specialists of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMBP RAS).


Orangery "Lada-2"


Orangery "Lada-2"

Insurance payments for 2.1 billion rubles

The ship insurer was VTB Insurance, which won the risk insurance competition in November, its premium was 91.2 million rubles.

A source in the company explained that the emergency commission for 3-6 months should clearly define the causes of the accident and relate them to the terms of the insurance contract. If the accident is recognized as an insured event, then VTB Insurance will pay a refund of no more than 2.1 billion rubles . According to the source, it is very likely that this incident will indeed be recognized as an insured event.

The reinsurance of the Progress MS-04 cargo ship is implemented in “highly reliable companies of the Russian and foreign markets”.

According to Alexander Zheleznyakov, the approximate cost of the ship and the rocket may be about 1.5 billion rubles. The insurance amount for the Soyuz-U launch vehicle is 794 million rubles, for the Progress MS-04 spacecraft - 1.3 billion rubles.

"Russian cosmonautics escaped from the veil of offensive accidents"

“Russian cosmonautics, having escaped from this shroud of defeats, offensive accidents and catastrophes, stabilizing quality issues, made a qualitative leap forward in the creation of new technologies,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said at the awards ceremony for the winners and finalists of the open competition on promising space technology on November 28 , three days before the accident.

Commenting on the loss of a cargo ship, Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Viktor Ozerov stressed that recently the number of accidents with the launch of launch vehicles has dropped dramatically compared with the period of two or three years ago, when such incidents occurred almost regularly. He recalled that similar accidents sometimes occur in other space powers, in particular, in China.

A similar opinion was expressed by the First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Industry, Vladimir Gutenev. According to him, the reorganization of Roskosmos was carried out in the right way. “We see that in principle there are fewer accidents. And where accidents arose due to failures in the quality management system, quality control, due to disciplinary measures, the organization of the process approach, modern quality management systems, the situation was significantly improved. I believe that the arrival of Igor Anatolyevich Komarov and his team allowed first to stop the growth of accidents, then drastically change the situation ... I think it would be completely wrong to correct the ideology of Roscosmos transformation that is happening now ... In each case not to take some kind of emergency measures and to give the new team the opportunity to drastically change the situation for at least several years, because what they got has been shaped by the mess over the last 10-15 years. Order is underway now, and it is necessary to approach the conclusions very carefully. ”

Statistics of space launches of Russia
2016: 17 launches, 1 unsuccessful
2015: 26 launches, 2 unsuccessful and 1 partially successful
2014: 32 launches, 1 unsuccessful
2013: 32 launches, 1 unsuccessful and 1 partially successful
2012: 24 launches, 1 failed
2011: 32 launches, 4 failed and 1 partially successful
2010: 31 launches, 1 failed
2009: 32 launches, 1 partially successful
2008: 27 launches, 1 partially successful
2007: 26 launches, 1 unsuccessful

PS Published photo of the found fragments.