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Review of all Soyuz upper stages ordered by Russian manufacturer

According to anonymous sources, the Russian manufacturer of the Freget upper stage that failed yesterday during a Soyuz commercial launch has ordered a review of all Fregets.

The Lavochkin research and production association will check all manufactured Fregat boosters, a source in the space industry told TASS on Wednesday after a recent failed launch. “The Lavochkin Research and Production Association will check all Fregat boosters produced earlier. If defects are found, they [the boosters] will be sent for further development,” the source said.

The Lavochkin Research and Production Association did not comment on this information for TASS.

The problem is that Russia already spent almost a full year beginning in early 2016 checking all its rocket engines for substandard construction done by a corrupt manufacturer. Even though the Fregat is built by another manufacturer, did they not check the Fregat upper stages then also?

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

4 comments

  • Mark

    Will this investigation delay any further launches from Russia this year? Would that mean that SpaceX wins the race for most launches?

  • LocalFluff

    I’ve found this database over space debris and satellites and graphics of their current location and orbit. The yellow ones are simply called “objects”. The latest Fregat hasn’t been listed yet, it seems. I haven’t noticed the domain name “.space” before.
    http://www.stuffin.space/

  • Kirk

    Anatoly Zak is reporting an embarrassing suspected cause for Tuesday’s Soyuz failure — that the Fregat upper stage “did not have the correct settings for the mission originating from the new launch site in Vostochny, as apposed to routine launches from Baikonur and Plesetsk. As a result, as soon as Fregat and its cargo separated from the third stage of the launch vehicle, its flight control system began commanding a change of orientation of the stack to compensate for what the computer had perceived as a deviation from the correct attitude, which was considerable.”

    http://www.russianspaceweb.com/meteor-m2-1.html#culprit

  • Edward

    LocalFluff,
    Thank you for that link. What a nice display. Putting the mouse on them gives the identity, and I found a few representing geostationary satellites that I worked on. Clicking on one gives orbital information. What a fun link.

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