A Russian spacecraft carrying 2.6 tons of food, fuel and supplies — but no astronauts — to the International Space Station failed to reach orbit on Thursday and largely burned up in the atmosphere as it fell back down.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, reported that a Soyuz rocket carrying the Progress 65 cargo ship successfully lifted off from Kazakhstan. The first six minutes and 22 seconds of the flight proceeded normally. But shortly after the upper stage separated from the core booster, flight telemetry stopped, leaving ground controllers confused about what had happened.

Roscosmos later confirmed that the Progress 65 and its cargo had been destroyed, with the failure occurring about 120 miles over Tuva, a Russian republic in southern Siberia.