The Russian Federal Space Agency says it has identified the primary cause of the Aug. 24 crash of an unmanned Soyuz rocket, according to Russian news agency Itar-Tass.
The crash of the rocket, which was carrying a Progress 44 cargo transport vehicle to the International Space Station, led a NASA official to say on Monday that the station might have to be temporarily abandoned come November, as the Soyuz is currently the only class of spacecraft capable of transporting NASA astronauts and Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in July.
“Members of the emergency commission have determined the cause of the failure of the Soyuz carrier rocket’s third stage engine. It is a malfunction in the engine’s gas generator,” said the spokesman from Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency, Itar-Tass reported.
The investigation into the crash isn’t complete, however, as the agency is still scraping for debris in the Altai Republic, where it occurred.
It remains to be seen if the news in any way impacts NASA’s decision to indefinitely delay the Soyuz mission originally scheduled for Sept. 21. That mission would transport one NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts to the space station and relieve some of the current station crew of six, all of whom are due back on earth by mid-November. Itar-Tass notes that at least on Russia’s end there’s been no official decision to postpone the mission. We’ll update as soon as we hear back from NASA.
