Russian rocket Soyuz resumes flight with crewed launch in early December

The break in manned flights caused by the failure of a Russian rocket Soyuz last month will be very brief.

Three members of the crew will travel on December 3 to the International Space Station (ISS) at the summit of a Soyuz, announced today Russian space officials (the November, 1st). This deadline falls less than eight weeks after the launch anomaly of October 11, which forced Soyuz ship NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin to make an emergency landing in the steppes of the United States. Kazakhstan.

The Hague and Ovchinin have landed safely and are in good condition, but they will not fly during the December 3rd mission. The upcoming launch will take place between cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency. [Soyuz Space Crew Launch Failure 2018: Full Coverage]

An unprepared ISS Soyuz mission will precede the December 3 takeoff, Russian officials in the Russian space added: A Soyuz will launch a Russian Progress robotic cargo ship heading for the laboratory in orbit on 16 November.

The Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos also revealed today the results of the Soyuz anomaly investigation. The failure occurred about 2 minutes after takeoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, when one of the four Soyuz belt thrusters (the one known as Block D) failed to separate properly. and hit the central stage of the rocket.

"The abnormal separation was caused by the non-opening of the nozzle cover to separate the oxidizer tank from the D block, due to deformation of the separation sensor pin [which was bent by 6 degrees and 45 minutes]"Roscosmos officials said in a statement today:" It was damaged when mounting the webbing boosters with the Central Platinum (Packet) at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. "

The rapid return flight will ease concerns about the ISS's ability to function properly in the event of staff shortages or staff shortages. The Soyuz spacecraft duo is the only route taken by astronauts to orbit the orbiting laboratory since NASA stopped its fleet of space shuttles in 2011.

This complete dependency should end relatively soon. US companies SpaceX and Boeing are developing astronaut taxis under NASA's multi-billion dollar contracts. Both vehicles will make their first crew test flights in the middle of next year.

Hague and Ovchinin will probably have the chance to fly again before the launch of these two private spaceships. Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin announced last month that plans were to launch the two astronauts to the ISS in spring 2019.

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