Russia's plan to send a crew to the International Space Station was placed on hold earlier this week because of technical reasons, but after a few days of checking all systems, the mission has now been rescheduled to Nov. 1.
The Soyuz MS-02 launch was temporarily cancelled after several tests were taken at the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan.
The plan was to have Shane Kimbrough, a NASA astronaut, and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko, sent to the International Space Station on Sept. 23.
This was first seen as bad news for NASA and Roscosmos because the Soyuz spacecraft is the only one, at present, capable of bringing humans to the ISS. NASA in its current state is not capable of ferrying astronauts to the station, and SpaceX is still struggling to get its bearings together.
Earlier this month, SpaceX suffered a setback when its Falcon 9 rocket caught fire during a test launch. The incident has led to space services being suspended. All in all, NASA's commercial crew program is facing delay as well, and this is due to partners experiencing technical challenges.
A report from Sputnik claims that one of the reasons behind the Russians' postponement is a short circuit discovered during a recent testing.
Russian news group RIA Novosti reported a source claiming that the spacecraft could be replaced and the mission could be reset to October.
"Preliminary data revealed that a short circuit occurred while testing the new series Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft, docked to a carrier rocket, at Baikonur," a source tells Sputnik.
As for some of the current inhabitants of the ISS — NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin — they were originally set to return to Earth on Oct 30.
Their trip home will depend a lot on how fast the Russians can fix the Soyuz MS-02 and get it into orbit. Considering how these things are complex and rely on several variables to work, anything is possible at this point. The technology may already be showing signs of aging, so issues are rising up from the shadows.
"The Russian side has informed the NASA central office of the preliminary plans to launch the manned Soyuz MS-02 on Nov. 1," says NASA representative Alexander Koptev.
These delays and technical challenges might actually be the reason the likes of Energia, a private rocket company in Russia, are envisioning reusable "space cabs" built precisely to shuttle space astronauts and space tourists not only between Earth and the ISS, but beyond: all the way to the moon.
