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NASA Says Will Use Russia's Soyuz despite Rocket Failure
[An Nahar] NASA chief Jim Bridenstine on Friday praised the Russian space program and said he expected a new crew to go to the International Space Station in December despite a rocket failure."I fully anticipate that we will fly again on a Soyuz rocket and I have no reason to believe at this point that it will not be on schedule," he told news hounds. The NASA administrator spoke to news hounds at the U.S. embassy in Moscow a day after a Soyuz rocket failure forced Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and U.S. astronaut Nick Hague to make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff in Kazakhstan. The pair escaped unharmed. It was the first such incident in Russia's post-Soviet history -- an unprecedented setback for the country's space industry. The Soviet-designed Soyuz rocket is currently the world's only lifeline to the International Space Station and the accident will affect both NASA and the work of the orbiting laboratory. Bridenstine, who is visiting Russia and Kazakhstan for the first time since his appointment as NASA chief this year, observed the launch from Baikonur cosmodrome with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Rogozin. Appearing at times emotional, he said he was "confident" a new manned mission to the ISS would go ahead as planned in December, praising the "wonderful relationship" between the Russian and U.S. space agencies. Posted by: Fred 2018-10-13 |
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