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One dead as Russian Soyuz blows up
MOSCOW, Russia -- A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a research satellite exploded seconds after blast-off, killing one person in a setback that could hit the International Space Station programme. The 300-tonne unmanned Soyuz-U launch vehicle exploded 29 seconds after take-off from Russia's Arctic Plesetsk cosmodrome late on Tuesday, its blazing debris showering onto the launchpad, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry said. A 20-year-old serviceman was killed by the blast's shockwave and eight other people were injured, defence ministry officials told Reuters. It was not immediately clear what caused the accident, which damaged the launch pad. The rocket carried a satellite with European research equipment and was not connected with the orbiting international station, manned at present by two Russians and one American. But an official at Russia's mission control, which monitors the $90 billion ISS programme, said the accident could raise a question mark over the next planned flight to the station. "Serious conclusions will have to be made as a modified version of this same rocket is due to take a group of cosmonauts to the ISS shortly," the official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters. Three Russian cosmonauts are scheduled to blast off for the ISS on October 28 on a brief mission to fit a new rescue capsule to the station. The Russian-made capsule has to be replaced every six months. "There are no plans as yet to postpone the flight," Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for Russia's top space authority Rosaviakosmos told Reuters. Good safety recordA spokesman for the defence ministry that manages the Plesetsk cosmodrome said the rocket hit the ground near the launchpad which had been sealed off by troops until a government commission completed investigations. The Soyuz booster, used for putting manned and unmanned craft into orbit, is one of the oldest Russian space vehicles. Soyuz-U is a derivative of the R-7 (Semyorka) intercontinental ballistic missile that launched Sputnik in 1957, has flown more space launch missions than any other rocket in the world and sent the first man, Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union, into space in 1961. The 34.5 metre launch vehicle also has a good reputation for safety. "We haven't had an accident for 11 years with this Soyuz booster rocket," the mission control official said. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Samara, Russia, plant consistently produced more than 50 Soyuz boosters per year and by the end of 1999 there had been 1,586 missions. The rocket's mission reliability at its peak was about 98 percent, among the best in the world. But Russia's space programme has been plagued by underfunding since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and shortfalls in financing have been blamed for a series of Russian rocket explosions in the 1990s, Reuters says. Tuesday's launch was designed to place a satellite research laboratory into space, with some of the equipment on board supplied by the European Space Agency. One of the planned experiments was a Spanish project to test the ability of lichens to survive in space. The main launch site for Russian space programmes is the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, in former Soviet Central Asia, which Moscow leases from its neighbour. It has been trying to shift launches to its own Plesetsk cosmodrome. This was the eighth launch from Plesetsk this year. This month 'N Sync singer Lance Bass had planned to join a Soyuz flight to the ISS but Moscow accused him of not coming up with the $20 million it asked for the trip.
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