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No fuel spill from crashed Russian rocket - space agency

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No fuel has spilled from a Russian carrier rocket that crashed in Kazakhstan early Thursday morning according to preliminary information, the space agency said Friday.

MOSCOW, July 27 (RIA Novosti) - No fuel has spilled from a Russian carrier rocket that crashed in Kazakhstan early Thursday morning according to preliminary information, the space agency said Friday.

The Dnepr carrier rocket crashed shortly after liftoff from the Baikonur space center due to a first stage engine shutdown.

Igor Panarin, the Federal Space Agency's press secretary, said the wreckage was discovered at 8:05 Moscow time (4:04 a.m. GMT), 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the space center on a steppe, a long distance from any residential buildings.

"The rocket probably fell together with the satellites [it was set to put into orbit]. In this case, many components of the fuel are burning through spontaneous ignition," Panarin said.

He also said a crater at the site of the crash proved that spontaneous ignition had occurred.

"In this case combustion products are low toxic," he said.

The Dnepr, a civilian version of the heavy R-36M2 Voyevoda (SS-18 Satan) intercontinental ballistic missile, was launched around midnight Wednesday (8 p.m. GMT), and would have orbited 18 Russian and foreign-made mini-satellites.

Kazakhstan's presidential representative at Baikonur, Adilbek Basekeyev, said specialists are examining the crash site from helicopters and planes.

"There are no casualties, the rocket fell in a deserted place," he said.

Kazakh Prime Minister Danial Akhmetov signed a resolution Thursday on forming a government commission to investigate the consequences of the crash.

Russia has been using converted ballistic missiles to launch satellites into orbit since 1999. The Dnepr, which was seen as a highly reliable carrier rocket, has a lift-off weight of about 250 metric tons and can carry a satellite payload of up to 3.7 tons to orbits at an altitude of 300-900 kilometers (185-560 miles).

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