Watch Putin’s Space Rocket Launch Aborted in Seconds
THIS is the nerve-wracking moment Vladimir Putin’s manned space rocket launch was aborted within seconds.
The Russian Soyuz spacecraft was almost ready to take off towards the International Space Station when a technical problem set off alarm bells.
6
6
Smoke could be seen billowing from beneath the rocket as it prepared to blast into space, with personnel having already evacuated the area.
But with just 20 seconds to go, it was announced that “an automatic launch abort has been initiated.”
The technical glitch was spotted with seconds remaining in the launch capsule, prompting space chiefs to immediately pull the plug on the mission.
The three-man crew – two women and one man – were safely evacuated from the rocket, narrowly avoiding disaster.
“The reason was a voltage drop in the chemical power source,” said Yuri Borisov, head of the Russian space agency.
“The automation worked during launch control and prevented the spacecraft’s systems from malfunctioning.
“The crew is safe, left the rocket and went to take off their spacesuits.”
The explosion has now been moved to Saturday afternoon.
The crew included NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, 54, along with Belarus’ first female cosmonaut, Marina Vasilevskaya, 33.
Vasilevskaya is normally a flight attendant for Belavia airline and flies on Boeing and Embraer aircraft.
Before that, she was a professional ballroom dancer for 15 years.
The commander is Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, 52.
“Colleagues, the space is like this and the situation is very understandable,” said Borisov, who spoke to Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko to explain why Vasilevskaya was still on the ground.
But the aborted launch is highly unusual.
In the history of modern Russia, manned launches have never been canceled while the crew was already in a spacecraft, TASS news agency reported.
In the USSR this happened only once, when the launch of the Soyuz-4, manned by cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov, was aborted in 1969.
However, in 2018, a rocket functioned and shot into space at a speed of 7,790 km/hour.
Two astronauts miraculously survived an emergency landing after the rocket boosters of Russia’s Soyuz MS-10 failed at 160,000 feet shortly after takeoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Russia’s latest rocket launch comes after plans were announced jointly with China to place a nuclear reactor on the moon within ten years.
With the space race intensifying, the two countries hope to install the unit by 2035.
Putin would also like to put his own space station in the sky.
The former spy said in October that the first segment of Russia’s new space station should be fully operational in 2027.
But a bombshell warning from US intelligence last month suggested that Russia could be planning to launch a satellite-destroying weapon armed with a nuclear bomb into space.
Mad despot Putin has already tested orbital weapons designed to destroy Western equipment, such as the Cosmos 2543 anti-satellite weapon.
Whatever happens, Putin hopes his next space launch will be more successful than last year’s Russian Luna-25 disaster.
The country’s first moon mission in fifty years ended in catastrophic failure when Putin’s robotic spacecraft went out of control and crashed.
The 800 kg Luna-25 probe was shattered into pieces when it crashed onto the surface from space.
6
6
6