A Failed Launch May Ground the World’s Astronauts for the Foreseeable Future
Launching people into space will always be risky, but in the khaki-colored desert of southern Kazakhstan, it can feel routine. Since the 1980s, the Baikonur Cosmodrome, operated by Russia, has been the site of dozens of successful launches to the International Space Station, first of Russian cosmonauts, and then of astronauts from around the world. For nearly 40 years, crews have piled into a cozy capsule on the nose of a rocket and blasted off without incident, headed for humanity’s home above Earth.
On Thursday afternoon local time, Russian flight controllers prepared for another routine launch. But something went wrong.
A few minutes into the flight, an emergency light flickered on inside the capsule. As the craft approached the edge of space, hardware detected. The capsule automatically switched to an abort procedure and fired engines to push itself away from the malfunctioning rocket. The capsule then landed by parachute in the desert, where rescue workers soon arrived to recover the crew.
