The spacecraft's payload consisted of 44 experiments prepared by the European Space Agency, Fluidpac, BIOPAN-4, Telescience Support Unit, and others.
The mission was supposed to consist of 15 days spent in orbit of the Earth and then re-enter for a landing near the Russia-Kazakhstan border.
The Blok D strap-on produced an abnormal start transient, but for unknown reasons, ground controllers did not send a shutdown command and abort the flight.
A 20-year-old army lieutenant, Ivan Marchenko, was killed and considerable damage resulted to launch facilities.
An investigation found that the most likely cause of the failure was debris being ingested into the Blok D hydrogen peroxide pump, cutting off the supply of lubricant to the turbopumps.