Russia is targeting December 3 for the first manned ISS launch since the accident

Moscow (AFP) – Russia hopes to send three members of its crew to the International Space Station on Dec. 3, the first explosion since an accident this month, the Roscosmos Space Agency said on Wednesday.

Russia, the only country that can transport astronauts to the scientific laboratory in orbit, suspended all launches after the failure of a Soyuz rocket on October 11, just minutes after takeoff – the first incident of this type in the history of travel in the post-Soviet space.

The executive director of Roscosmos, Sergei Krikalyov, told the official news agency RIA Novosti: "The industry is currently making significant efforts to advance the launch until December 3."

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques and Anne McClain of NASA will participate in the rocket.

The trio was originally scheduled to take off on Dec. 20, but their journey had begun after the October 11 launch failed with NASA's Russians Aleksey Ovchinin and Nick Hague.

Ovchinin and Hague have safely returned to their capsule, and will probably have the opportunity to visit the space station in the spring, said Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin.

Krikalyov announced that ISS astronauts (Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, Serena Aunon-Chancellor of NASA) and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos would return to Earth "around December 20".

They were originally scheduled to land on Dec. 13 after they boarded the ISS, a joint venture of space agencies from America, Europe, Russia, Japan, and Canada.

Meanwhile, an unmanned cargo ship Progress will take off to ISS on November 16, after postponing its launch from Oct. 30 due to the accident investigation, Krikalyov said.

– Sensor malfunction –

In the first official report on the cause of the accident, Roscosmos announced that a sensor indicating the separation of the first two stages of the rocket had malfunctioned.

The Soyuz rocket taking astronauts has three stages, or segments. The first floor with four boosters is used to project the rocket into the sky, before falling back to Earth while the second and third floors continue the journey.

"The reason found by the commission (investigating the accident) was the abnormal operation of a sensor that signals the separation of the first and second floors," said Krikalyov at an event of the year. 39, space industry in Moscow.

This malfunction prevented one of the first four boosters from coming off properly and struck a second-stage fuel tank, which exploded.

– Blow in the picture –

The accident was the first involving an inhabited launch since the Soviet era and bore another blow to the image of the Russian space program after the embarrassing loss of satellites and an unmanned freighter in 2015.

Russia has opened a criminal investigation into a possible violation of safety rules in construction.

The director of Roscosmos, Rogozin, a former deputy prime minister and nationalist politician, was shown disguising space industry officials in a video published by RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

"Listen guys, you can not work like that," says Rogozin in the video. One official said he was shot dead last week at a meeting to discuss issues related to Soyuz rockets. The director threatened to suspend bonus payments.

Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov also criticized Wednesday the space sector for its "very high" overhead costs and "many bosses".

Roscosmos is scheduled to hold a press conference Thursday to clarify the results of the investigation.