Soyuz accident

[Crazy_dog no.3]

MOSCOW (Reuters) -- A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a research satellite exploded seconds after blast-off, killing one person in a setback that could hit the international space station program, officials said on Wednesday.

The 300-ton unmanned Soyuz-U rocket exploded 29 seconds after take-off from Russia's Arctic Plesetsk cosmodrome late on Tuesday, its blazing debris showering onto the launchpad, an Emergencies Ministry spokesman said.

A 20-year-old serviceman was killed by the blast's shockwave and eight other people were injured, defense ministry officials said.

The rocket carried a satellite with European research equipment and was not connected with the orbiting international station, manned at present by two Russians and one American.

But an official at Russia's mission control, which monitors the $90 billion international space station (ISS) program, said the accident could raise a question mark over the next planned flight to the station.

"Serious conclusions will have to be made as a modified version of this same rocket is due to take a group of cosmonauts to the ISS shortly," the official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

Two Russians and one Belgian are scheduled to blast off for the ISS on October 28 on a brief mission to fit a new rescue capsule to the station. The Russian-made capsule has to be replaced every six months.

"There are no plans as yet to postpone the flight," Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for Russia's top space authority Rosaviakosmos told Reuters.

A spokesman for the defense ministry which manages the Plesetsk cosmodrome said the rocket hit the ground near the launchpad which had been sealed off by troops until a government commission completed investigations.

Outstanding success rate

The Soyuz booster, employed to put manned and unmanned craft into orbit, is one of the oldest Russian space vehicles. It traces its origins to the rocket which sent the first man, Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union, into space in 1961. It also has an outstanding success rate.

"We haven't had an accident for 11 years with this Soyuz booster rocket," the mission control official said.

Russia's space program has been plagued by underfunding since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and shortfalls in financing have been blamed for a series of Russian rocket explosions in the 1990s.

Tuesday's launch was designed solely to place a satellite research laboratory into space, with some of the equipment on board supplied by the European Space Agency. One of the planned experiments was a Spanish project to test the ability of lichens to survive in space.

The main launch site for Russian space program is the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, in former Soviet Central Asia, which Moscow leases from its neighbor. It has been trying to shift launches to its own Plesetsk cosmodrome. This was the eighth launch from Plesetsk this year

 

 

 

I was looking around CNN.com after one of STTCT's posts.

[Kvan]

You should make your title "News Reporter"

Now I don't have to visit any news sites, I just come here and get all my news from Crazy_dog #3

[Crazy_dog no.3]

Aw comon call me CD instead.