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A Russian space investigation accused a damaged sensor of having forced a Soyuz rocket to halt its journey just two minutes after its launch.
Astronaut Nick Hague of NASA and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin escaped dramatically shortly after the launch of the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 11 October.
The spacecraft was about 30 miles above the surface of the Earth when the crew was forced to make a dangerous "ballistic reentry" into the Earth's atmosphere. After the successful deployment of his parachute, the rescue capsule landed in the steppes of Kazakhstan about 30 minutes after the fall of the rocket.
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Oleg Skorobogatov, who conducted the investigation into the accident, told reporters that the investigation had revealed that the sensor had been damaged during the final assembly on the launch pad in Kazakhstan.
Russian rockets are manufactured in Russia and then transported by rail to the Baikonur cosmodrome, rented by Russia.
Skorobogatov said officials are now taking action, including putting all assembly staff through proficiency testing and additional training to ensure that such malfunctions do not happen again.
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The rocket manufacturer will also dismount two other recently assembled rockets that are expected to be launched in the coming weeks and reassembled, Skorobogatov added.
Last month, Russia said the launch went awry after one of the rocket's four rocket launchers failed to drop the spotlight after two minutes. The breakdown damaged the main stage and triggered an emergency landing, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
Nevertheless, the aborted mission has dealt a new blow to the troubled Russian space program, which is currently the only way to get astronauts to the orbiting outpost.
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The Russian program has been confronted with a series of unmanned launcher issues in recent years. Space.com notes that Russia lost a $ 45 million weather satellite last year due to a programming error. The satellite went into the wrong orbit when the wrong coordinates were used, according to The Guardian.
In 2011, a long-awaited Russian probe on Mars was lost when it did not follow the planned trajectory. A year earlier, a rocket carrying three communications satellites had fallen into the Pacific Ocean.
However, the recent incident is the first failure in Russia since September 1983, when an earlier version of Soyuz exploded on the launch pad. During this incident, a launch escape system saved both crew members.
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The country's space program has been put in the spotlight. Russia recently described a hole found on the International Space Station as an act of sabotage. NASA has denied this claim and the two space agencies are trying to find the cause of the problem.
Since the withdrawal of the Space Shuttle in 2011, the United States relies on Russian Soyuz rockets, launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome, to bring astronauts to the Space Station. NASA pays up to $ 82 million per Soyuz headquarters to the orbiting space laboratory.
Roscosmos officials met Wednesday with NASA counterparts to give them a full presentation on the malfunction, said Roscosmos general manager Dmitry Rogozin on Thursday.
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Russian space authorities plan to launch two more unmanned Soyuz launches before bringing a crew to the space station.
The US Space Agency plans to launch manned missions from the US in the coming years. The space agency recently announced the nine astronauts who will participate in the test flights and the first missions of SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Boeing CST-100 Starliner.
Associated Press contributed to this article. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
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