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 By Ivan Couronne Washington (AFP) Oct 11, 2018
The taxi service to the orbiting International Space Station is taking no passengers until further notice. Neither the United States nor Russia will be able to send astronauts to the ISS until investigators determine why a Soyuz rocket failed after blast-off Thursday, complicating an already tricky launch calendar for 2019. The only way to get astronauts from Earth to the ISS since 2011 has been aboard Russian Soyuz rockets. But the Russian space agency Roscosmos has grounded the rockets until a probe concludes into what caused the anomaly which forced US astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan. Here are questions and answers about the disruption of service to the ISS: - How long could the suspension last? - The next Soyuz launch for the ISS was scheduled for December 20, and it is supposed to take a new three-person crew to the Space Station. But it's not clear how long it will be grounded. "If it's two months or six, I really can't speculate on that," International Space Station Operations Integration Manager Kenny Todd told a press briefing. "They're probably going to ground the Soyuz rockets for a while," said Erik Seedhouse, an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Seedhouse, who specializes in applied aviation sciences, estimated that it would last at least "a few months." In 2015 the Progress -- an unmanned transport spacecraft that sent supplies to the ISS -- had problems similar to those experience Thursday by the Soyuz rocket. However, the Thursday case involves a manned vehicle, "so there's much stricter requirements in investigations," Seedhouse told AFP. The European Space Agency has already acknowledged that the incident will affect the ISS calendar. It is making contingency plans for the three current ISS crew members -- German Alexander Gerst, American Serena Aunon-Chancellor, and Russian Sergey Prokopiev, all of whom were scheduled to return to Earth in December -- to possibly stay aboard the station longer than expected. One potential problem: the spacecraft that would let the ISS crew return to Earth, which docked at the station in June, is equipped with batteries that lose power after about 200 days, NASA said. That would in theory push the time limit of crew's return to Earth to early January 2019, which is the sole limiting factor, said John Logsdon, head of the Space Policy Institute at The George Washington University. As for food -- there is enough for the crew to last several months, as the station is regularly resupplied by unmanned Japanese and American spacecraft. - When will the American rockets be ready? - NASA mothballed the Space Shuttle program in 2011, and since then has been paying Russia tens of millions of dollars to send astronauts to the ISS. The contract with the Russians ends in late 2019, and the US space agency has deals with two American companies, Boeing and SpaceX, to step in. Elon Musk's SpaceX, who also runs electric carmaker Tesla, will be using its Falcon 9 rockets. Since 2012 SpaceX has launched satellites for NASA, and has carried out 16 resupply missions to the ISS. Sending astronauts to the ISS will be a first for a privately owned company. However, SpaceX's rocket program, just like Boeing's, has run into delays, as is often the case in the aerospace industry. An unmanned Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon capsule is scheduled for launch in January 2019, with a similar manned launch set for June 2019. For Boeing, launches are set for March and August 2019 respectively. - What is the risk for NASA? - Soyuz's problems are a headache for the United States, which has a policy of having a continuous presence in space. An interruption would be disastrous in terms of image, but also for the research aboard the ISS, as the orbiting station serves as a scientific laboratory. The slightest delay by SpaceX or Boeing could hold up the approval of their manned launch programs. This could mean that the first astronaut they would send to the ISS would depart in 2020 instead of 2019. Thursday's Soyuz incident "will put some pressure" on SpaceX and Boeing "to meet their current schedule," Logsdon told AFP.
Aborted launch of Soyuz spacecraft: what we know Here is what we know so far about the latest setback to the Russian space industry: - Blast-off seemed normal - The lift-off from Russia's cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, took place on a bright sunny day. The rocket was to carry NASA's Nick Hague and Russia's Aleksey Ovchinin to the International Space Station. It lifted off on time at 0840 GMT, an AFP photographer at the scene saw. Live video transmitted by NASA and Roscosmos suggested that all went as planned. "The rocket lifted off absolutely as normal," said AFP photographer Kirill Kudryavtsev, who was watching at Baikonur and has covered the space launches many times. "But after the first stage separation, I had a sense that there was something like a flash." - Accident with booster - Live video footage showed the rocket going up as far as visible to the cameras. NASA and Roscosmos broadcast footage of the two crew members inside the capsule speaking to mission control and working on their tablet computers. Suddenly after two minutes of flight, three short beeps were heard, indicating an emergency situation. "An accident with the booster, 2 minutes, 45 seconds," the voice of Ovchinin could be heard saying calmly immediately afterwards. NASA said there had been a "failure of the booster." The incident came as the rocket was travelling about 4,700 miles (7,563 kilometres) per hour, 119 seconds into the voyage, NASA said. Ovchinin, who was the commander of the Soyuz space craft, said they felt that they were already in weightlessness. - Rescue operation - The emergency system was activated to allow the capsule containing the astronauts to land back on Earth in ballistic descent mode. The astronauts said they were experiencing strong G-force. "We're tightening our seatbelts," Ovchinin said. Russian news agencies initially quoted unnamed space officials as saying that the crew had landed in Kazakhstan and were in communication with mission control. "They have landed in a ballistic landing," NASA TV reported. Russian space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin confirmed on Twitter at 0920 GMT that "The crew has landed. All are alive." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists: "Thank God, the cosmonauts are alive." Roscosmos said on its website almost an hour after blast-off that "the emergency rescue system functioned and the spacecraft made a landing in Kazakhstan along the flight route." NASA said that the astronauts were in "good condition" after a search and recovery team reached the landing site and helped them leave the capsule. They were flown by helicopter to the nearest airport in Zhezkazgan. Roscosmos tweeted photographs of them being examined there by medics. The two were then due to be flown back to Baikonur over 400 kilometres away. RIA Novosti state news agency reported that the last similar accident took place in the Soviet era in 1983. During a flight crewed by cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Gennady Strekalov, a fire broke out in the rocket booster but the cosmonauts landed safely in their capsule and were uninjured.
NASA photo shows International Space Station transiting the sun Washington (UPI) Oct 11, 2018 The International Space Station orbits the Earth once every 93 minutes. The satellite's orbital path regularly takes ISS across the face of the moon and sun. Recently, photographer Joel Kowsky documented the space station's trip across the face of the sun. Kowsky combined the photographs into a composite image, featuring the space station's silhouette, backlit by the orange sun. On Wednesday, NASA shared the composite image online. The space station circles Earth at an average spe ... read more
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