Assembly Mistake Caused Failure of Rocket Carrying 2 Astronauts, Russia Says

(MOSCOW) — An investigation has found that a failed Russian rocket launch three weeks ago that aborted after just two minutes was caused by a sensor that was damaged during assembly, a top Russian official said on Thursday. The Soyuz-FG rocket carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin failed shortly into the Oct. 11 flight, sending their emergency capsule into a sharp fall back to Earth. The two men landed on a steppe in Kazakhstan safely in the accident, the first of its kind for Russia’s manned program in over three decades.The head of the Russian space agency earlier blamed the failure on a malfunction of a sensor, but didn’t explain why it didn’t work. Oleg Skorobogatov, who led the probe into the accident, told reporters on Thursday that the investigation found that the sensor was damaged during the final assembly at the launch pad in Kazakhstan. Russian rockets are manufactured in Russia and then transported by rail to the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome. The last time Russia saw an aborted manned launch was in 1983, when two Soviet cosmonauts jettisoned and landed safely after a launch pad explosion. More recently, Russia’s space program has been dogged by a string of failed satellite launches involving unmanned vehicles. Skorobogatov said officials are now taking steps, including putting all assembly staff through competence tests and additional training, to make sure such incidents will not happen agai...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized onetime space Source Type: news