MOSCOW, Aug. 24 (UPI) -- The wreckage of a Russian space freighter that malfunctioned while separating from a launch rocket crashed in South Siberia's Altai Republic, authorities said.
"At 5:25 p.m. Moscow time [5:25 a.m. EDT Wednesday] we received information about falling wreckage from the M-12M space freighter," a police source in the region told RIA Novosti.
In the republic's Choya District a powerful explosion was heard within a 60-mile radius, RIA Novosti reported.
The Soyuz-U rocket carrying the Progress M-12M space freighter blasted off from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan.
"The flight sequence, confirmed by Roscosmos, shows that the space freighter failed to separate from the third stage of the Soyuz-U carrier rocket on the 325th second of the flight," a space industry source told RIA Novosti.
It was the the second Russian space failure within a week. The Express AM-4 telecommunications satellite failed last Thursday to separate from the Proton-M carrier rocket and could not reach its designated orbit.
