Russia Has Lost The Ability To Send People Into Space For The First Time In 60 Years

A serious accident occurred at Baikonur during the launch of Soyuz MS-28.

At Baikonur during the launch of the Soyuz MS-28 to the International Space Station (ISS) on November 27, the maintenance cabin collapsed. This is evidenced by footage from the Roscosmos broadcast. According to the source The Insider, the matter concerns a movable folding structure under the launch structure, where work is being done on the rocket's tail section.

Analyst of rocket launches Georgy Trishkin specified that the maintenance cabin fell under pad 31 - the only place from which Russian manned missions to the ISS can be dispatched. In his opinion, as a result of the accident, launches of Soyuz and Progress spacecraft "are postponed indefinitely."

A post-flight inspection found that part of the launch complex was vomited out by the gas jet of the first stage rocket engine, wrote the channel "Yura, sorry." According to his data, the cosmonauts were not injured, but the structure will need repair.

Popularizer of cosmonautics Vitaly Egorov after analyzing the frames of the broadcast stated that "in fact from this day Russia lost the opportunity to launch people into space, which has not happened since 1961." According to some reports, repairing the pad could take up to two years. Roscosmos did not comment on what happened.

Egorov specified that in 64 years, about half a thousand launches have been made from this launch pad, and since 2018 it is the only one that provides the Russian ISS program. According to the expert, the problem can be solved only through repair. Another option is the modernization of Gagarin Launch Pad No. 1, which has already been written off and handed over to the Kazakhstan Museum of Cosmonautics.

"Gagarin Launch" was planned to be modernized back in 2018 with the participation of the United Arab Emirates, but after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Abu Dhabi refused to cooperate and invest in the project. "It became clear that the costs and complexities involved would be much greater than we had hoped for," the UAE Space Agency explained. The launch table of the Soyuz rocket at the Vostochny Cosmodrome is not adapted for spacecraft launches.

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