Two Soyuz rockets, currently located at the Baikonur and Kourou spaceports, of the same modification with the crashed Soyuz-FG launch vehicle will be dismantled and rechecked following the October 11 incident, head of the probe commission Oleg Skorobogatov said Thursday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st November, 2018) Two Soyuz rockets, currently located at the Baikonur and Kourou spaceports, of the same modification with the crashed Soyuz-FG launch vehicle will be dismantled and rechecked following the October 11 incident, head of the probe commission Oleg Skorobogatov said Thursday.
On October 11, a Soyuz-FG launch vehicle failed to take the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft with the new crew of the International Space Station into space. This became the first failure of a manned space launch in modern Russian history. Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague managed to eject in a rescue capsule and make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan unharmed.
"We have two such rockets [assembled into a stack]. One of them is undergoing preparation at the Guiana center, while another one is undergoing preparation at the Baikonur cosmodrome to ensure the launch of the Progress spacecraft," Skorobogatov said.
According to him, some measures were developed to prevent failures similar to one that happened during the recent Soyuz-FG launch, which was caused by a rod of the side unit of the rocket that was misshaped during its assembly at Baikonur.
"Some proposals and recommendations were developed for re-checking of carrier rockets assembled into a stack, which include disassembling the stack, checking the sensors of the separation contacts and reassembling the stack," Skorobogatov added.
Next launches of Soyuz rockets will take place on November 7, 16, according Skorobogatov.
