Recently the Russian space programme hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. An American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut had to go for an emergency landing after their Soyuz rocket malfunctioned during a flight to the ISS.
The mission was aborted and the crew was rescued from a place near Baikonur, where the astronauts had made the emergency landing. Russia had immediately issued a notice shortly after the incident, saying that they had suspended all the future manned space flights for now, and an investigation was on to figure out what went wrong with the Soyuz rocket.
Now, the Russian space agency has stated that they have an idea about what might have gone wrong during that flight. As per the Roscosmos' statement, the failure might have occurred due to the collision between the discarded first stage and the second stage of the rocket's booster.
"A deviation from the standard trajectory occurred and apparently the lower part of the second stage disintegrated. The rocket stopped its normal flight and after that, the automatic system did its work. This could have been caused by the failure of the system of the normal separation, which should have been activated. We will analyze the causes in detail," the Executive Director for Manned Flights at Roscosmos, Sergei Krikalyov told Russian news agency TASS, while revealing the initial investigation results.
Although the investigation report provides some details regarding the recent Soyuz rocket failure, it actually leaves quite a few questions unanswered. While the agency did say that the failure occurred due to a collision between the rocket's stages, no one has clarified yet as to why that happened. The agency has not yet mentioned whether it happened because of the components used in the rocket or it was just a bad day for those astronauts.
The investigation is still going on in the Russian space agency Roscosmos and it can be expected that more details will be provided soon. Reportedly, we may hear more about it sometime after October 20. By that time, the Russian space agency expects that, they will be able to find the answers and resume the, now halted, space missions and launch schedules.
