Russian spacecraft crashes after launch

An unmanned Russian spaceship with tonnes of cargo for the International Space Station crashed into Siberia shortly after blast-off in the latest blow to the countrys embattled space program.The unprecedented accident overnight raised concerns over the reserves of the six crew members on board the station and clouded the future of an ISS program that relies on Russia exclusively following the retirement of US shuttles.Both Russian officials and NASA said the current team, which besides three Russians includes two US astronauts and a spaceman from Japan, had at least two months of supplies and there was no need to jump into the two evacuation craft on board the ISS.But the disaster came especially hard for a Russian space program that has suffered five previous launch failures in the past nine months and lost its most advanced commercial satellite shortly after blast-off last week.Local officials said fragments of the craft crashed into Russias Siberian region of Altai on the border with Mongolia and China, a remote region covered by soaring mountains and poorly accessible by road.The fragments fell in an uninhabited area of the Choisky district, said the head of the Altai government Yuri Antaradonov.Emergency services are working there but the efforts are complicated by the fact it is now night, he told the Interfax news agency.Russias Roskosmos space agency said in a terse two-sentence statement that the problem appeared to have developed in the propulsion system that led to a subsequent system shutdown.