Proud Putin humiliated as Russian cargo spaceship crashes back to Earth en route to International Space Station – just days after bragging about Moscow leading space race

A RUSSIAN cargo ship which was on its way to the International Space Station exploded shortly after it was launched.

The craft, which was unmanned, was taking off from Kazakhstan and carrying rocket fuel, food, water and a new spacesuit.

Contact was lost with the supply ship six minutes after it took off and two minutes before it was set to go into orbit.

According to Russia's space agency Roscosmos: "Routine control systems failed to register the spacecraft in the designated orbit."

Although the supplies were lost, the statement said it would "not affect the normal operations of the International Space Station (ISS) systems and the subsistence of the station's crew".

The cargo was expected at the ISS on Saturday.

This is not the first time a launch has failed - in April 2015 another Progress ship disintegrated as it fell to Earth.

The loss of the spacecraft is a blow to Russian pride in their resurgent space programme.

It has just unveiled its “cyber cosmonaut” which will be sent to the International Space Station ahead of heading to the Moon to tackle more ambitious tasks on the lunar landscape.

Putin’s scientists are developing a new hypersonic jet called the PAK-DA, which it is claimed will be able to drop nuclear warheads from space.

Russia blamed the failure on a hitch with a Soyuz rocket.

After the incident all space travel was suspended for nearly three months, which resulted in a group of astronauts being forced to spend an extra month on the ISS.

Soyuz MS-01 commander Anatoly Ivanishin, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi had to remain in orbit.

Soyuz MS-02 commander Sergey Ryzhikov, flight engineer Andrey Borisenko and NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough were all due for launch at the time.

Russia sends at least three supply ships to the station each year - they then fall back to earth and burn up in the atmosphere above the Pacific.

Currently there are six astronauts on the ISS.

Three crew members representing the United States, Russia and France left in November bringing the total of people on the craft to six.

The Soyuz carried Peggy Whitson of NASA, Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency),

They joined Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko.

The Expedition 50 crew members will spend over four months conducting more than 250 science investigations in fields such as biology, Earth science, human research, physical sciences and technology development.

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