Russia: Sensor flaw caused launch abort
Next scheduled flight to space station may be moved up
The launch to the International Space Station was aborted last month after a malfunctioning sensor triggered the rocket’s first and second stages to crash into each other, Russian officials said Wednesday.
The rocket’s first stage “during the separation did not take the right distance and hit the second stage fuel tank, which caused the second stage to break,” Sergey Krikalev, Russian state space corporation Roscosmos’ executive director for manned programs, told state-run news agency TASS.
In Oct. 11, American astronaut Nick Hague, 43, and his crew mate, Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, were aboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft rocketing to the space station when the launch was aborted, forcing an emergency landing. It was the first aborted launch of a Soyuz spacecraft in 35 years. Both Hague and Ovchinin were safe and in good condition after the landing.
Russia is taking steps to ensure that malfunction doesn’t happen again, Krikalev said, and officials still think they can move up the next flight to the space station, currently scheduled for Dec. 20.
NASA could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Since NASA’s space shuttle program was shuttered in 2011, the agency has relied on Russia to ferry American astronauts to the station. NASA has spent billions of dollars on the space station in its 20-year lifetime, but the agency has no other way to reach it and, therefore, is grounded until Russia sorts out what caused the aborted launch.
NASA’s Serena Auñón-Chancellor, who is living on the space station after arriving in June, said in an interview Wednesday with the Houston Chronicle that having two fewer crew members on board hasn’t impacted their dayto-day plans.
“It’s interesting, we talked about how we almost immediately went from six [crew members] down to three, and I’m used to having two other Americans with us all the time,” Auñón-Chancellor said. “It definitely was a change, but it hasn’t impacted our schedule at all.”
Krikalev said Wednesday that the Dec. 20 flight — transporting NASA’s Ann McClain, and two others — could be moved up to Dec. 3, according to TASS.
That means the crew on the station — including Auñón-Chancellor — could return around Dec. 20, he added.
Auñón-Chancellor said the crew is always prepared to stay on the station longer or to leave early. Spaceflight is hard, she added, and they have to be ready for anything.
“We were well aware of launch abort systems, we trained to fix holes in case we do have a leak,” she said. “For us, when we’re in training, we practice like we play.”
October’s failed mission would have been Hague’s first spaceflight since being tapped as an astronaut in 2013. NASA officials aren’t sure when he will get to fly again, but Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Roscosmos, has said he and Ovchinin would launch again in spring 2019.
How that would work is unclear. The Soyuz’ April 2019 launch already has an assigned crew, and NASA has yet to offer insight into the development.
Russian officials still are investigating another Soyuz-related problem that occurred in August, when astronauts discovered a hole that caused an air leak in a different Soyuz attached to the station. The hole was plugged, but Russia continues to investigate how that happened.
NASA expects that investigation to conclude in December.
As Auñón-Chancellor and her crewmates wait for more direction from NASA and the Russians, she said it’s business as usual.
“We’re already looking forward to the next crew flying up here,” she said. “We learn to trust [the countries’] investigations ... we rely on the countries to sort it out.”