Soyuz rocket failure caused by malfunctioning sensor – Roscosmos

The Soyuz-FG carrier rocket failure was caused by a malfunction in the detector which signals separation of the rocket’s first and second stages, according to Sergey Krikalyov, the executive director of manned space programs at Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos. “The cause was malfunctioning of the detector that flags separation the first and second stages,” Krikalyov said on Wednesday at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Sources in the space industry have previously suggested this version, but it has not been officially confirmed, Sputnik said. A Soyuz-FG launch vehicle failed to take the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft, with the new crew of the International Space Station, into space on October 11. It was the first failure of a manned space launch in modern Russian history. Cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague ejected in a rescue capsule and made an emergency landing in Kazakhstan unharmed.