Russia attributes failure of Soyuz launch to collision with booster

The International Space Station is currently inaccessible after the recent abandonment of the launch of Soyuz. We are still waiting about a year before SpaceX or Boeing have the hope of an inhabited launch. The investigators are eager to find out what happened during last week's incident. According to a first report from the Russian Space Agency, one of the first four propellers of the rocket would be to blame.

On October 11, Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague were forced to interrupt their journey to the International Space Station after several minutes of flight. The pair returned to Earth safely after a ballistic comeback, which can include twice as many forces as it would have experienced at launch. The current ISS crew can receive supplies via unmanned vehicles, and a Soyuz descent module is docked for emergency return journeys. However, no new crew member can reach the station until the cause of last week's incident is resolved.

According to Sergei Krikalev, leader of the Roscosmos manned flights, the investigation focused on a possible collision between part of the first leg and the second leg (or heart). The Soyuz MS series has the reputation of being a reliable vehicle partly thanks to its modular design. At launch, the four first-stage boosters come on, each with four RD-107A kerosene engines. These four boosters are arranged radially around the first / second stage of the vehicle. When the first boosters finish their work, they drop simultaneously. However, any of these boosters might not have been cleared properly.

The Soyuz rocket was launched last week with the first thruster shot.

The boosters of the first Soyuz stage all have propulsive systems that move them away from the main stage, but they may have failed. The problematic aircraft probably hit the body of the rocket when it ejected two minutes after launch, causing damage and triggering an automatic abandonment.

The Russian authorities are still conducting an investigation and a full report will be published around 20 October. Roscosmos says that he is speeding up the construction of another Soyuz so he can quickly resume his launches when he gets the go ahead. NASA is conducting its own investigation into the incident, but has not yet made a statement. The US agency hopes to stop using Soyuz rockets to reach the ISS next year, but the date on which SpaceX and Boeing have to start carrying passengers has been postponed several times.

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