{"id":313063,"date":"2025-11-28T21:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T21:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/313063\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T21:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T21:38:07","slug":"russia-accidentally-destroys-its-only-way-of-sending-astronauts-to-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/313063\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia accidentally destroys its only way of sending astronauts to space"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/russia\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Russia;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Russia<\/a>\u2019s only crewed-mission launch site has suffered major damage following a rocket launch on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan will be unable to host launches until repairs are made, according to the space agency <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/topic\/roscosmos\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Roscosmos;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Roscosmos<\/a>, marking the first time in decades that Russia has lost the ability to send people to space.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The launch of the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft was otherwise successful, with none of the crew members injured.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The three-person crew, which included Nasa astronaut Chris Williams and two Russian crewmates, made it safely to the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Roscosmos shared footage of the launch, which showed part of the launchpad collapse into an exhaust trench below as a result of the rocket\u2019s blast.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The space agency said that \u201cdamage to a number of elements of the launchpad was detected\u201d following the launch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cThe launch complex\u2019s condition is currently being assessed,\u201d Roscosmos told state media. \u201cAll necessary backup components are available for restoration, and the damage will be repaired in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Independent has reached out to Roscosmos for more information.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Analysts have questioned the timeframe for repairs, with critical cabling, sensors and other sections of the launchpad\u2019s service bay believed to be destroyed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cThis is the only launchpad Roscosmos uses for the ISS program, and in the future it was supposed to be used for launches to the Russian Orbital Station,\u201d Russian space commentator Vitaliy Egorov wrote on Telegram.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cIn effect, from this day Russia has lost the ability to launch humans into space, something that has not happened since 1961. Now it will be necessary to quickly repair this launchpad or modernise another one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Soyuz crew will spend eight months aboard the ISS before returning to Earth in July 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Russia is currently developing its own independent orbital outpost, called the Russian Orbital Service Station (ROSS), with the ISS set to be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/space\/spacex-nasa-contract-iss-dorbit-b2569682.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:decommissioned in 2030;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">decommissioned in 2030<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The first ROSS module is planned for launch in 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s only crewed-mission launch site has suffered major damage following a rocket launch on Thursday. The Baikonur Cosmodrome&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,9693,48526,12711,12747,6639,66],"class_list":["post-313063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-international-space-station","tag-launch-site","tag-rocket-launch","tag-roscosmos","tag-russia","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}