A Soyuz spacecraft has delivered three more people to ISS, bringing the space station crew to its full complement of six for the first time since September, but a Russian military communications satellite crashed shortly after launch due to a rocket failure yesterday.
It was the fifth Russian rocket failure this year. Perhaps more disturbingly, the failures have occurred in more than one model of Russian launcher. The string of incidents bears directly on U. S. space efforts because, at least for the time being, the only way American astronauts have to access ISS is by riding on Soyuz. The most recent failure was by a rocket that is a derivative of the model that launches Soyuz.
These failures could simply be a statistically quirky bad stretch, but if they signal a weakening of Russian industry and technological capability, they have important implications beyond space.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment