State of emergency lifted after Russian spacecraft crash

A state of emergency imposed after a Russian space freighter fell to Earth in Siberia’s Altai Republic has been lifted in the region. According to Russian (RIA Novosti) News Agency, the Progress M-12M space freighter was lost after failing to separate from the Soyuz-U carrier rocket on Wednesday. A rocket engine failure is believed to have caused the accident, the first of its type in the history of Russia’s space industry. “The state of emergency was imposed when we were not aware exactly where the fragments had fallen,” said Sergei Volodchenko, deputy head of the Choya district. “Now we have determined that the fragments only fell in the Choya district,” he said, adding that the district remained on high alert. Fragments from Russian rockets launched from the Baikonur space centre in nearby Kazakhstan have been falling on the Altai Republic for decades. Experts estimate that some 2.5 tons of space waste have fallen on the republic in total. After the retirement of the US shuttle fleet earlier this summer, Russian Soyuz craft became the only way for astronauts to reach the ISS until at least the middle of the decade. NASA is paying its Russian counterpart Roscosmos more than $1 billion for crew transport services over the next four years.