Soyuz Trouble

[Yazata]

2021 video by Dmitry Rogozin (!!!) showing the "maintenance cabin" moving out from under a Soyuz booster at Vostochny. People watching this were exclaiming about how the Russians allow technicians to remain under the fully fueled rocket. In the US, the pad would have been evacuated by that point. (The Russians were probably smoking too. Hey, it's Russia.)

https://x.com/robert_savitsky/status/199...0001630536

Photo of the "maintenance cabin" in position under a rocket booster. I believe that the idea is that it retreats (on rails) into the slot behind it, and the panel on this side seals the opening. The prevailing theory is that the rocket blast at launch created a venturi effect around the rocket exhaust plume that lowers air pressure under the launch mount, and that sucked the platform out of its hole so forcefully that it ran off its tracks and dumped into the flame trench. There are supposed to be locks to prevent that from happening, but they didn't work this time.

(Note all the debris in the flame trench. That's called FOD (foreign object debris) in aerospace-talk and it's bad. The rocket blast can propel it like bullets. Hopefully it's construction debris from working on the launch mount up above that will be cleaned up before a launch.)

[Image: G66Jn5uWMAAJh2U?format=jpg&name=medium]

[Yazata]

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev has been removed from the prime crew of NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 mission, scheduled to launch February 15, 2026. He has been replaced by his backup, fellow Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

Roscosmos says the change was due to Artemyev's transfer to another job. Which is probably true, though it doesn't explain why he was transferred.

NASA and SpaceX have not commented publicly.

But the space community grapevine is saying that Artemyev was caught at SpaceX Hawthorne where he was training for Crew-12 copying sensitive SpaceX materials including technical specifications for SpaceX rocket engines, that fall under ITAR export restrictions.

[Yazata]

Anatoly Zak of Russian Spaceweb says

"Pad personnel struggled to secure the mobile platform before last month's botched Soyuz launch but proceeded to liftoff anyway so not disappoint bosses and tourists, according to unofficial reports."

https://x.com/RussianSpaceWeb/status/199...0098067814

Details here:

https://russianspaceweb.com/baikonur_r7_31.html#cabin

"A veteran of the Baikonur Cosmodrome with good contacts at the center reported on the Novosti Kosmonavtiki web forum that the mobile platform had not been properly secured in its underground shelter before launch, which let the blast wave from the rocket exhaust pull it off its guide rails and into the flame trench...

According to one rumor from Baikonur, the mobile platform was retracted and moved back to the rocket as many times as five times, as the specialists tried unsuccessfully to secure it in its parking position inside its shelter...

When the personnel was finally ordered to evacuate the pad some 30 minutes ahead of the liftoff, the decision was made to leave the platform in its parking position inside its shelter without securing it properly rather then to postpone the launch. It was not immediately clear who made a decision to proceed with the launch despite this clear violation of launch criteria."