No Christmas dinner on ISS
Russia's space agency says an unmanned cargo ship has crashed, 383 seconds after it blasted off en route to rendezvous with the International Space Station.
It came only hours after a keynote speech by Vladimir Putin to legislators in which he claimed Russia was successfully charting its way in the world despite Western sanctions.
The spacecraft, which was scheduled to arrive at the ISS on Saturday, was carrying rocket fuel and oxygen tanks, when it took off from the former Soviet cosmodrome at Baikonur in Kazakhstan.
The spacecraft lost contact with control and an explosion was reported near Biysk, in Siberia, around the time the spacecraft vanished.
It is not clear if the spacecraft came down in the Tuva Republic, in Siberia, or came down in neighbouring Mongolia or even the Pacific Ocean.
The loss will be seen as acutely embarrassing in Moscow, and especially for Rogozin who clamed 'issues of quality' over space launches had been stabilised after a series of failures.
NASA
said: 'Our astronauts and the Russian cosmonauts are safe aboard the station. Consumables aboard the station are at good levels.'
Interfax reported the International Space Station has enough food reserves to continue working until the arrival of a reserve cargo rocket
Technical mishaps have complicated plans to extend the periods during which the ISS is fully staffed with six astronauts. Russia's Soyuz capsules offer the only way for global astronauts to reach the space station since the American space shuttle program was retired in 2011.
A similar incident with the Soyuz-U launch occurred in August 2011 when the third-stage engine failed due to the clogging of a fuel line, said Russian sources.