The space community was shocked when last week, a Russian Soyuz rocket underwent massive failure during a crewed mission to the International Space Station. However, it seems like NASA is considering this as a one off event, and has decided to continue relying on Soyuz for it’s upcoming missions.
According to administrator Jim Bridenstine, NASA will be launching a new crew in December via Soyuz. He made this statement while speaking with reporters at the US embassy in Moscow, adding that “not every mission that fails ends up so successful.”
NASA is able to consider this event so lightly thanks to the very fortunate fact that there was no loss of life, as the escape system built into the launch hardware functioned exactly as it was meant to. Astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin were able to enter the escape pod around 90 seconds into launch, and landed 250 miles away from the launch site, unhurt.
Bridenstine also took the opportunity to reaffirm NASA’s faith in the rocket, and Roscosmos , stating that the next mission planned for December, should take place on schedule.
I fully anticipate that we will fly again on a Soyuz rocket and I have no reason to believe at this point that it will not be on schedule.
Ensuring that this mission takes place on time is important for NASA. Why? Because, that would mean that the current crew abroad the International Space Station would not have to extend their stay. While the ISS can fly empty for brief duration, NASA wants to avoid such situations as having no one up there on that multi-billion dollar apparatus can lead to issues with the ongoing experimentation taking place in the vastness of space.
Of course, it’s not like NASA has a whole lot of options at the moment. The Soyuz happens to be the only operational rocket that can take humans into space. So NASA is going to have to deal with the situation, and hope that the investigation into the rocket failure does not come with anything sinister.
