Malfunction Caused Rough Soyuz Landing
It turns out it was a technical malfunction, not a mistake by the crew, which caused last week’s Soyuz landing to be unexpectedly hard. Russian cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and American astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit landed 500 kilometres short of their destination in Kazakhstan on May 4th, and had a pretty rough ride. It appears the problem was a malfunction in the spacecraft’s control system, but experts in Russia haven’t been able to reproduce the problem. Investigators have called upon Russia to change the way they recover spacecraft, to position recovery aircraft and vehicles along the return path.
Recent Posts
China is Going Back to the Moon Again With Chang'e-6
On Friday, May 3rd, the sixth mission in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (Chang'e-6) launched…
What Can Early Earth Teach Us About the Search for Life?
Earth is the only life-supporting planet we know of, so it's tempting to use it…
China Creates a High-Resolution Atlas of the Moon
Multiple space agencies are looking to send crewed missions to the Moon's southern polar region…
Dinkinesh's Moonlet is Only 2-3 Million Years Old
Last November, NASA's Lucy mission conducted a flyby of the asteroid Dinkinish, one of the…
The Universe Could Be Filled With Ultralight Black Holes That Can't Die
Steven Hawking famously calculated that black holes should evaporate, converting into particles and energy over…
Starlink on Mars? NASA Is Paying SpaceX to Look Into the Idea
NASA has given the go-ahead for SpaceX to work out a plan to adapt its…