A Russian official announced a Soyuz rocket failure caused by a stray sensor

Although the official report on The cause of the failure of a Soyuz rocket is only released on Thursday, a Russian official The national news agency TASS announced its central conclusion a day earlier than expected.

Sergei Krikalev, executive director of the "inhabited programs" of the Russian space company Roscosmos, said that a sensor placed on board the rocket had not properly reported the separation first and second steps. As a result, one of the side-mounted side thrusters did not separate properly from the vehicle and collided with the rocket.

This collision resulted in the automatic abandonment of one of the Soyuz abandonment systems, resulting in the crew of NASA astronaut Nick Hague. and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin were rescued from the rocket and sent back to Earth

The Russians quickly investigated this failure, which occurred on October 11, within three weeks of its completion. They were pushed to do so because the Soyuz probe is currently the only means by which NASA, Russia and their international partners have the means to bring people to and from the station. Three people remain in orbit: American astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor, the German commander of the ISS Alexander Gerst and the Russian Sergey Prokopyev. They must return to Earth around December 20th.

After their investigation, the Russian authorities plan to mount the next crew launch from mid-December to early December, in order to maintain the human presence on the station. The space station can operate autonomously for a while, but if something critical was happening and no astronaut was on board to solve the problem, the station could be severely damaged or even lost.

Krikalev announced that the next launch would be moved. Sent on December 3, it will carry the same crew that was originally scheduled for this mission, the MS-11: the Russian Oleg Kononenko, the American Anne McClain and the Canadian David Saint-Jacques. The problems with the Soyuz rocket, he said, will be solved.

NASA officials have always claimed that they had every confidence in the Russian investigation, as well as in the rocket and the Soyuz spacecraft. It is inconceivable that the most cautious US space agency will suffer a total failure in October and cause humans to fly on this same rocket less than two months later. However, given their dependence on Russia, US space flight planners have no choice but to hand over to the Russians until the end of the war. in commercial commercial vehicles developed by SpaceX and Boeing, probably in about a year.