Will Look At Ways To Keep Current ISS Crew In Orbit For An Extended Period

Russia has grounded its Soyuz spacecraft indefinitely while it investigates a booster failure which led to an abort of the Thursday launch to the ISS with an American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut on board. The two spacefarers were returned safely to Earth, but the anomaly left NASA and Roscosmos with no way to send additional crew to the station.

In a briefing held Thursday, NASA officials said they had few details about the accident, and would not speculate about the cause, according to a report from SpaceNews.

“Watching the ascent from our contingency action center here, the first stage appeared nominal,” said Reid Wiseman, NASA deputy chief astronaut. “There was first stage booster separation and then the abort occurred, and that’s really all the data that we have at this time.”

Kenny Todd, ISS operations integration manager, said the problem appeared to coincide with the separation of the Soyuz' strap-on boosters, but "it’s very, very difficult to the untrained eye to be able to try to diagnose what was going on.”

Todd said the investigation would be left to a Russian state commission, which was formed within hours of the accident occurring, and NASA hopes to have some preliminary information within a few days. But he cautioned that it was unclear how how long the investigation would last.

The Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft is docked to the station, which the current three-man crew could use if an emergency evacuation became necessary. But that spacecraft will reach the end of its useful life in December.

Todd said that NASA will look for ways to "look at what our options are to try to make sure we don’t have to de-crew station.” Wiseman said he has spoken to the current crew and they are "doing great. They’re ready to serve at the will of the program. They will stay up there as long as we need them to.”

(Image from NASA video)

FMI: Source report, www.nasa.gov