Thursday, October 11, 2018

NASA: Russian Launch Failure May Impact SpaceX Commercial Crew Mission

The launch failure early this morning in Kazakhstan of a Russian Soyuz mission to the International Space Station may impact the commercial mission of Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX and Boeing, if NASA is forced to return crews to earth and leave the ISS without a crew. In a briefing on Thursday, NASA said it is extending the current mission on the ISS until December, but that if those crew return to earth before another crew can be delivered to the ISS, the Commercial Crew demo flight will not be able to occur. Those flights will require a crewed ISS in order to dock those missions, according to NASA. SpaceX is led by Los Angeles technology mogul Elon Musk. The scramble came after U.S Astronaut Nick Hague, as well as Russian colleague Alexey Ovchinin had to conduct an emergency abort of a launch to the ISS, resulting in a "ballistic landing" of their spacecraft in Kazakhstan this morning. The two astronauts were already in weightlessness in space, when there was a booster malfunction.