** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

Man of Honour
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Watched some of it live, mainly from -10s to just after 1st stage landing.

Sill find it incredible that they recover and can reuse the primary stage.
 
Soldato
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Struggling to find any analysis of what impact the ms10 failure may have on the ISS program in the coming months / year. Any thoughts?
 
Soldato
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Struggling to find any analysis of what impact the ms10 failure may have on the ISS program in the coming months / year. Any thoughts?
Well an immediate issue is that Russia have grounded Soyuz pending an investigation. So that means the ISS will become unmanned after the current crew depart which they have to do before the end of the year (when the docked Soyuz will exceed it's lifespan).

Unless OFC Russia clears Soyuz before the end of the year, which in fairness may happen as this is the first failure of this type in 43 years and the abort system worked flawlessly. That's a good safety record (better than the average plane, the space shuttle, and most of the stuff currently in development). After all, this is the first launch failure of the Soyuz-FG in 65 launches, and while one is still one too many, it's not exactly the end of the world.
 
Soldato
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When talking about the Soyuz rockets with somebody earlier I remembered something, there's a scheduled launch for the end of October that's supposed to send a Progress spacecraft to the ISS aboard a Soyuz-2.1a rocket. Realistically the Russians could swap out the Progress for a Soyuz if they wanted to get additional crew up to the ISS before it has to be abandoned in December (there are also other canabalizable missions scheduled before then).
 
Soldato
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Good news. The Soyuz failure has been tracked to a bent pin in a faulty sensor. New launch schedule to keep the ISS manned....

16th November - Launch of Progress MS10
3rd December - Launch of Soyuz MS11
20th September - Landing of Soyuz MS09

Roscosmos said:
As follows from the findings of the Investigation Committee told to reporters by Oleg Skorobogatov, «The launch ended up with a launcher failure caused by abnormal separation of one of the strap-on boosters (Block D) that hit with its nose the core stage (Block A) in the fuel tank area. It resulted in its decompression and, as consequence, the space rocket lost its attitude control.

The abnormal separation was caused by the non-opening of the lid of the nozzle intended to separate aside Block D oxidizer tank due to the deformation of the separation sensor pin (bended by 6˚45‘). It was damaged during the assembling of the strap-on boosters with the core stage (the Packet) at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The LV failure cause is of the operational nature and spreads to the stock of already assembled packets of the Soyuz rocket.

The Emergency Crew Rescue System of Soyuz MS-10 spaceship functioned properly. The crew was acting as required by the on-board instructions and those given by the Mission Control Center.

To ensure the implementation of the Launch Manifest for the missions under the Federal Space Program and Russia’s international cooperation programs, Roscosmos has arranged a development of preventive measures to avoid any such contingences in the future and taking of urgent actions to resume Soyuz launches in November 2018. Along with that, the State Committee has approved the launch dates under the International Space Station Program as follows: the launch of Soyuz-FG rocket with Progress MS −10 cargo spaceship to go on November 16, 2018, and the launch of Soyuz MS-11 manned spaceship to go on December 3, 2018. The crew of Soyuz MS-09 — Alexander Gerst (ESA), Sergey Prokopiev (Roscosmos) and Serina Auñón-Chensellor (NASA) — will return to the Earth on December 20, 2018.


Source

 
Soldato
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EDIT: They're getting pretty damn adept at returning the first stage now.

They just need to work on cleaning up everything else that's been left behind up there for the last 50 years and all the dead satellites

Surely there must be some money to be made in salvaging all that space junk that cost billions in R&D and manufacture ?
 
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