Russians follow advanced launch of Soyuz by defective sensor – Spaceflight Now

WRITTEN HISTORY FOR NEWS FROM CBS AND USED WITH AUTHORIZATION

Russian investigators discovered the cause of a spectacular launch of Soyuz on October 11 in the direction of a "deformed" sensor in a system controlling the separation of a first-stage strap propellant from the first floor The rocket, triggering a spectacular emergency escape the commander of the Russian mission and his co-pilot NASA, said Thursday senior executives.

Oleg Skorobogatov, who conducted the investigation into the accident, said the sensor had been damaged during final assembly at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, adding that its conclusion was "proven and confirmed". He did not explain how the sensor had been bent, but only the rocket assembly.

Soyuz rockets in preparation for upcoming flights will be inspected to ensure that no similar problems existed.

The launch of a Soyuz rocket aboard the Russian navigation satellite Glonass, scheduled for November 3, from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, north of Moscow, and the launch of another Soyuz, carrying the MetOp C meteorological satellite, to Kourou, French Guiana.

The Russians then plan to launch a supply ship for the Progress Space Station from Baikonur on 16 November, a day after NASA and Northrup Grumman launched a Cygnus cargo capsule connected to the station from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Virginia. The unmanned satellites Cygnus and Progress will both arrive at the station on 18 November.

Assuming these flights are going well, the Russians plan to launch the next Soyuz pilot on Dec. 3, carrying Commander Oleg Kononenko, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques and NASA astronaut Anne McClain on a flight to the International Space Station.

The current Space Station crew – Expedition Commander 57, Alexander Gerst, NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor and cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev – originally planned to return to Earth on 13 December. They now plan to return home a week later, on December 20th.

Before Prokopyev returns to Earth, Kononenko and he plan to make an exit into space on December 11 to inspect the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft at the origin of orbiting Gerst's crew. A small leak in the upper habitat module of the spacecraft was discovered August and Russian engineers want to know what would have been the extent of the damage.

They also want to know if this was caused deliberately by a deliberate act when processing the spacecraft, as suggested at one point by Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

The October 11 abortion was the first such incident for the normally reliable Soyuz rocket since September 1983, when two cosmonauts narrowly escaped an explosion on the launch pad. The only other abandonment of Soyuz was in April 1975 when two other cosmonauts were forced to land urgently after a different separation problem.

Given the long history of the rocket and its systems, the analysis of telemetry and the examination of shipwrecks, Russian investigators were able to quickly identify the problems that occurred during the last incident.

At a press conference held in Moscow on Thursday, a spectacular launch video was released. It shows how the second central stage of Soyuz FG quickly lost control after one of the first four boosters attached to the rocket crashed in the center.

Soyuz MS-10 commander Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague were slammed into their seats as the spacecraft's computer triggered an automatic shutdown, launching rockets quickly trained the capsule. Extending on a now ballistic flight, the crew made a steeper descent than normal, experiencing about seven times the normal force of gravity before landing about 250 miles downstream.

Ovchinin returned to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, near Moscow, while Hague finally flew to Johnson Space Center in Houston.

It is unclear when they may have a second chance to complete their mission in the space station, but NASA's Jim Bridenstine and Rogozin have both pledged to reintroduce Ovchinin and Hague into the crew rotation.

Due to the abandonment of the launch, the Russians were forced to launch the Kononenko crew before the deadline. Taking flight during the first week of December, the new crew will have time to make a proper pass before helping Gerst and his teammates leave on December 20th. The Gerst crew must leave no later than the beginning of January or their Soyuz MS-09. spacecraft will exceed its certification in orbit.

With the departure of Gerst, Auñón-Chancellor and Prokopyev, the crew of Kononenko will have the station for himself until April, when another Soyuz crew will take off.

The original flight plan provided that Oleg Skripochka, NASA astronaut Christina Koch and a guest astronaut from the United Arab Emirates take off on April 5. The UAE astronaut would then return to Earth about 10 days later with Hague and Ovchinin. Thanks to the stop of the launch, it is not yet known who will fly to the station next spring or how the flights will take place.

In the short term, NASA hopes to continue launching a Northrup Grumman Cygnus cargo ship over an Antares thruster from Virginia in mid-November, followed by the launch of a new vessel. SpaceX Dragon supply over a Cape Canaveral Falcon 9 rocket on December 4, the day after the takeoff of Kononenko's crew from Baikonur.

Two NASA space exits to install a second set of batteries for the space station's solar power system are on hold. The Japanese freighter HTV that brought the batteries to the station in September will return to Earth on November 7th. It was originally intended to transport used batteries out of the station, but they will have to be discarded later.