MOSCOW - A Russian state commission has set Oct. 30 as the launch date for a Soyuz-FG rocket carrying a three-person crew to the International Space Station (ISS).
The decision was made after investigators determined that it was a probably a production glitch rather than faulty design which led to the Oct. 15 crash of a similar launch vehicle, space officials said.
According to a senior official at Rocket Space Corporation (RSC) Energia, the commission made its decision after determining that an "alien object" in the rocket's first stage engine, set off a series of malfunctions which led to the crash of Soyuz-U. One soldier was killed and eight others injured in the disaster that happened at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.
Rosaviakosmos spokesman Sergei Gorbunov told SPACE.com that investigators analyzed detailed telemetry of the Oct. 15 launch to determine that there was some "alien object or objects" in the Block D engine of the first stage of the ill-fated Soyuz-U. He said the objects were probably located in the turbo-pump of Block D's engine as well as in the tube, which is connected to the pump and which transports hydrogen peroxide to the pump.
The RSC Energia official, who did not wish to be identified, told SPACE.com that the commission ordered that the Soyuz-FG's engines be checked for alien objects at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Oct. 21.
The inspection revealed nothing and the rocket was moved to the fueling facility on the same day, he said. The actual fueling began Oct. 22, said the official. The fuelling is one "of the irreversible operations" which are carried out to prepare the rocket for the launch and which indicate that the launch will take place, he said.
The similarity between the engines of the Soyuz-FG and Soyuz-U prompted the state commission to postpone the ISS-bound launch. The launch was originally scheduled for Oct. 28.
Rosaviakosmos spokesperson Vyacheslav Mikhailichenko would neither confirm nor deny that the launch of the crew has been scheduled for Oct. 30. However, another Rosaviakosmos source confirmed in a telephone interview Oct. 22 that the commission set the launch for Oct. 30. He noted that the decision would only become official on Oct. 23 when Rosaviakosmos notifies Russia's ISS partners.
Gorbunov would not elaborate on how the objects could have got into the engine's pump and pipe. According to the RSC Energia official, however, investigators believe the objects got into Block D during the assembly of the engines at the Motorostroitel plant in Samara. He said investigators found a deformed cogwheel of the pump of the Block D engine. The cogwheel was probably damaged by the object, or objects, which also caused the pump to catch fire, he said.
The Block D engine began to malfunction immediately upon the launch, director general of Rosaviakosmos Yuri Koptev told reporters on Oct. 18 in Moscow. "There were abnormal pulsations, which exceeded the norm of the average pressure by 5-6 times. Then there came a sharp decompression probably caused by a leak of hydrogen on of the connecting tubes of the engine," Koptev said.
Calls to Motorostroitel, which makes both RD-107 and RD-108 designed by Energomash of Khimki, went unanswered on the Oct. 22 evening.
Typically in Russia, a single rocket failure leads to a suspension of other missions using the same vehicle only if a design flaw is suspected, officials said. Successive failures also would normally trigger a halt in launch activity, which was the case when two Protons crashed in 1999. Back then investigators determined that it was presence of alien particles in the engines that caused them to catch fire and sent the two Protons crashing back.
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