Thursday, October 11, 2018

Manned SpaceX Mission May Be More Urgent After Russian Launch Failure

Interest in a manned launch to the International Space Station by Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX may take on some more urgency, after Russia has suspended all manned rocket launches in the wake of a launch failure this morning. The aborted launch resulted in an emergency landing and search and rescue of a NASA astronaut and his Russian counterpart. The aborted launch from Kazakhstan took place at 4:40am ET from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Towards the end of the launch, there was a sudden, unexpected booster rocket failure which resulted in a force emergency landing of the astronauts in what was described as a "sharper than normal angle". A spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying "Thank God the crew is alive". The NASA astronaut, Nick Hague, had been scheduled to dock at the International Space Station later today. The failure is apparently the first manned launch failure since a Soyuz exploded on the launch pad in 1983, killing the crew. The Russian space program had another high profile failure last year, in November of 2017, when another Soyuz payload also failed at launch, and was lost in the ocean, and aso saw a dramatic launchpad explosion in December of 2016 on a Progress supply ship also destined for the ISS.