He was to bring a load to the Russian astronauts of the ISS containing in particular water and fuels. However, the cargo ship Progress MS-04 will never resupply the Station since it was consumed in the atmosphere a few minutes after its takeoff on Thursday December 1st.
The Progress MS-04 cargo ship was carrying 2.4 tonnes of equipment, water, fuel and also food products, clothing and medicines for astronauts on the International Space Station. But a few minutes after taking off on Thursday, December 1, 2016 from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, contact was lost with the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
» Contact was lost 383 seconds (6 min 38 s) after the Soyuz launcher lifted off with the Progress MS-04 cargo vessel “said the agency Roscosmos in a press release. A little later, the Russian space agency added that the spacecraft had burnt up in the atmosphere. » Due to an abnormal situation, we lost the supply vessel Progress at an altitude of 190 kilometers above an unpopulated and mountainous area of Tuva (Russian Republic of Tuva). Most of the fragments burned in the atmosphere, according to preliminary information « .
Contacted by franceinfo, the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet explained that if the cargo ship were to supply the Russian cosmonauts, it is all the crew members who will be impacted and he announced that he would » share everything with Russian astronauts. » We are a team here so we share the food, we share the air we breathe, we share the water, we share everything. To say that it is Russian colleagues who are losing their supplies is not true, because we are going to share everything, so it still impacts us indirectly « .
He also recalled that the stocks are currently sufficient to last several months and that the important thing is that this supply mission was not manned. » Fortunately, there were no colleagues, there were no friends in it, that’s what matters in the first place « .