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 not released until Thursday, a Russian official unveiled his main conclusion one day in advance, reports the reporter. TASS news agency.

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 allowed to correctly report the separation of the first and second floors. As a result, one of the side-mounted boosters did not separate properly from the vehicle and collided with the rocket.

The collision caused the automatic abandonment of one of the Soyuz's abortion systems, dragging the crew of NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin out of the rocket and sending them back to Earth.

The Russians opened a quick investigation into this failure, which occurred on October 11, and concluded it within three weeks. They have been pushed to do so because, for the moment, the Soyuz probe is the only means available to NASA, Russia and their international partners to bring people to 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 are planning to launch the next crew launch from mid-December to the beginning of December to ensure a continuous human presence on the station. The space station can operate autonomously for a while, but if something critical breaks and no astronaut was on board to solve the problem, the station could be severely damaged or even lost.

Krikalev said the next launch would be postponed until December 3 and would carry the same crew as planned 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 full confidence in the Russian investigation, as well as in the rocket and the Soyuz spacecraft. It is inconceivable that the more cautious US space agency will suffer a total failure in October and cause humans to fly on the 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 being developed by SpaceX and Boeing, probably in about a year.