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"The Soyuz capsule has landed back on Earth carrying two crew members. Search and rescue teams are in contact with the crew and are en route to the landing loca
by okket 8y ago
"The Soyuz capsule has landed back on Earth carrying two crew members. Search and rescue teams are in contact with the crew and are en route to the landing location."
"Search and rescue teams report they are in contact with the Soyuz crew, who report they are in good condition. The teams are en route to the landing site."
https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1050316612304175104 https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1050316612304175104
Possible implications:
"You can be sure Soyuz launches will be grounded indefinitely. Commercial Crew has to conduct a successful uncrewed launch next year before flying astronauts to the ISS (and no - they will not 'fast track' anything that involves crew safety)."
https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1050318472859840512 https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/10503184728598405...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tfha 8y agoMay not be what we wanted to happen, but everyone got home safely. That's a win in my book, glad the emergency systems are working as intended.
- martin-adams 8y agoI agree. Knowing and trusting the fail safes is a good thing.
- theandrewbailey 8y agoI guess I've watched too many movies and TV shows where "activating the failsafe" means everyone gets killed.
- rory096 8y agoWorth noting: launch escape tower was jettisoned nominally moments before the failure. Escape was via the capsule separation mechanism followed by ballistic then parachute descent. If the booster had exploded, the crew would have been in extreme danger.
- village-idiot 8y agoWas jettisoning the escape tower at that moment planned, or was that a failure?
- rory096 8y agoPlanned (nominal). See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIxkVAXPYPc&t=134 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIxkVAXPYPc&t=134
- theoh 8y agoIt's so bizarre that in NASA-speak the word nominal means not the value that a parameter should have ("in name") but the fact that the parameter is within a specified tolerance of that value. It's like a contraction of "<value> is what it should be, according to its formal definition". https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/184876/how-did-nominal-come-to-mean-within-acceptable-tolerances https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/184876/how-did-n...
- MPSimmons 8y agoSNAFU, so to speak.
- dogma1138 8y agoNormal the tower is used for launch pad abort and for a very short window afterwards. The Soyuz launch abort system is actually quite robust probably the best launch abort system that has been implemented for manned flight so far with the Orion and Crew Dragon only marginally improving on it and even that is still not clear given those haven’t been flown yet alone actually used in practice yet.
- coob 8y agoIt hasn't flown any missions, but Crew Dragon has had its launch pad abort tested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcHD9AmkxA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcHD9AmkxA0
- mikeash 8y agoI wonder what it’s like for the astronauts. One moment you’re sitting in a rocket ready to spend the next six months in space, you’ve said your goodbyes, you’re thinking about what it will be like, what sorts of pictures you want to take, what you’ll say when you make that first phone call home from space... and then ten minutes later you stumble out into the Kazakh wilderness and start scanning the sky for rescue helicopters.
- phyller 8y agoYea, wonder if they felt disappointed or relieved. Regardless, they are part of a very small club of "astronaut's whose rocket broke during launch and are still alive". I wonder who else is in that club?
- dba7dba 8y agoI honestly cannot think of any such incident happening in all the years of space exploration. Crewed or not-crewed capsule. And I've watched enough documentaries on Apollo and other space programs. It's the beginning of a very very small, exclusive club, one that will hopefully not be too big.
- avmich 8y agoSomething similar happened with another Soyuz in 1983, right?
- docbrown 8y agoThe Soyuz T-10-1 launch in 1983, maybe? The escape system launched minutes before the explosion on the launching pad happened.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No._16L https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_7K-ST_No._16L
- jpatokal 8y ago2 to 6 seconds before the explosion, not minutes.
- andys627 8y agoCheesy aviation idiom: "Any landing you walk away from is a good landing, any landing you can use the plane again is a great landing."
- sideshowb 8y agoYOU WILL NOT GO TO SPACE TODAY https://xkcd.com/1133/ https://xkcd.com/1133/
- the_duke 8y agoThis may prove very problematic. The next crew launches are scheduled for December, April and July. Assuming that an investigation takes a year, that means a lot of missed flights and no way to reach the ISS until Boeing/SpaceX are ready.
- scoggs 8y agoWhat does this mean for people at the ISS? There are definitely people there now, right? I'd imagine this doesn't change their schedules for return?
- Sharlin 8y agoIt might; at least part of them. I presume they have contingency plans for exactly this situation. Probably leave a skeleton crew up there until either a new crew can be launched or the station has to be abandoned (supply missions are probably not a problem, but the Soyuz return capsules have a limited ”shelf life”).
- wolf550e 8y agoThey have a single return capsule there. They can't leave anyone without a return/rescue boat, so they all have to return together and leave the station empty. And as you said they can't extend stay for a year because Soyuz has limited life.
- Sharlin 8y agoOops, right, they’re in the middle of crew change and there’s only three of them and one Soyuz up right now. That does complicate matters.
- village-idiot 8y agoIsn’t that Soyuz the one with the patched hole?
- 8y ago
- Denvercoder9 8y agoCommercial Crew might be moved forward a bit. SpaceX claims to have hardware ready and be prepared for a December launch, but that was pushed to January due to conflicting visiting vehicles. Obviously the visiting vehicle schedule will be reworked during the investigation, so that might open up a window for them to launch in December.
- JshWright 8y agoHere's Chris Hadfield (someone who has flown on this spacecraft before) discussing the event: https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/1050356573703262210 https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/1050356573703262210
- avmich 8y ago"The three people... on the space station, they are basically marooned there." What? They have their own Soyuz capsule, they have means to return to Earth on a very short notice, why Chris need to call it this?
- JshWright 8y agoYeah, he even goes on to say that later....
- Rebelgecko 8y agoI wouldn't be excited to return to Earth in that particular Soyuz
- JshWright 8y agoIt's the only one there. The current crew will be using it to return to earth at some point. The manufacturing defect is in a portion of the spacecraft that is jettisoned before reentry anyway.
- avmich 8y agoThe hole is drilled in the orbital compartment of the Soyuz, not in the landing capsule. If you don't forget your spacesuit - which you shouldn't forget anyway - you're reasonably safe.
- metalliqaz 8y ago"reasonably safe"