Three crew members are reportedly unharmed after their planned launch to the International Space Station from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome was automatically canceled Thursday morning, according to a live NASA webcast.
Expected to launch on a Roscosmos Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft at 9:21 a.m. ET and arrive at the space station around three hours later, were NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and Belarusian spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya.
However, an automatic abort was initiated 20 seconds before the launch because the second of the two umbilicals, or service towers, positioned against the side of the Soyuz rocket, was unable to start the engine sequence.
According to a NASA update, the abort was caused “by ground support equipment due to low voltage reading in the Soyuz rocket electrical system.” The crew has now another chance to launch on Saturday morning, but whether or not it succeeds will depend on the engineers’ ability to identify and fix the automated abort’s reason in a timely manner.
Meanwhile, a different cargo resupply mission was not affected by the abort; it departed at 4:55 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and is scheduled to arrive at the space station on Saturday morning – delivering food, supplies, equipment, and new scientific research.
Once the launch is rescheduled, Dyson, Novitskiy, and Vasilevskaya will join NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara, Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Alexander Grebenkin, who are currently on board the space station.
