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  • [♪ INTRO]

  • Despite the fact that we've been sending humans into space consistently

  • for over half a century, space travel remains super dangerous.

  • I mean, you're getting a ride from some very powerful and very controlled explosions.

  • And we were reminded of that danger last week, when a scheduled launch of the Soyuz rocket

  • to the International Space Station had to be aborted mid-flight.

  • Luckily, astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin are safe and sound back on Earth.

  • But now we have to figure out exactly what went wrong before anyone else can go,

  • which threatens ISS operations.

  • While there have been some upgrades made over the years, the Russian Soyuz rocket family

  • is virtually unchanged from the late 1960s; a small capsule sits atop a 50-meter-tall rocket.

  • At its base, that rocket is surrounded by four booster rockets to give the entire

  • mass the necessary oomph when it's first taking off.

  • And right now, it's the only way we have of sending humans to space.

  • Two minutes after liftoff, those extra boosters are supposed to break off from the central rocket.

  • But on October 11, it looks like something went wrong with that process.

  • Instead of continuing their climb with the new push of the central engine,

  • the astronauts cited feeling weightless.

  • They were suddenly in free fall.

  • Shortly thereafter, the computer automatically triggered a launch abort.

  • The crew capsule separated from the rocket and fell back to Earth, where it landed safely.

  • Albeit in the middle of nowhere, but they did find them.

  • Now all crewed launches are on hold while Russia's space agency

  • Roscosmos investigates exactly what went wrong.

  • But that is not good news for the three crew members currently living on the ISS.

  • They were scheduled to return to the Earth in December, with a new team of three joining

  • Hague and Ovchinin on the station and continuing operations and experiments.

  • Now their missions will either have to be extended, or they'll have to abandon the

  • station in the Soyuz capsule currently docked.

  • Even though the crew has plenty of provisions, the fuel in that lifepod

  • is only cleared to last until January.

  • If the order is made to abandon the ISS, it will be the first time since 2000 that

  • we haven't had a single person living there.

  • Now, it's not like the ISS is gonna fall out of the sky if there are no people on it,

  • but we won't be able to do any maintenance.

  • Already, the spacewalk Hague and Ovchinin had trained for, to replace the batteries

  • on the station's solar panels, was cancelled.

  • For now, Roscosmos plans to try the launch again in the spring of 2019.

  • With an additional report coming out in the next few days,

  • hopefully we will hear some good news.

  • But unfortunately, this is not the only failure space missions have suffered this month.

  • Less than a week before the failed Soyuz launch, NASA saw two of its space-based telescopes

  • perform emergency shutdowns.

  • On October 5th, the Hubble Space Telescope suffered a mechanical failure,

  • and only 5 days later, the Chandra X-ray Observatory got a bad data reading

  • that interfered with its momentum sensor.

  • Because they're a bit too out of the way to send any technicians,

  • all of our space-faring technology has programming that instructs them to enter a safe mode

  • when they detect something wrong.

  • They lock themselves into a safe position, including pointing their mirrors away from

  • the Sun and their solar panels toward it, and switch over to backup hardware.

  • It happens more often than you might think.

  • For example, the infrared Spitzer telescope automatically entered safe mode back in 2006,

  • and the Dawn spacecraft has done it at least twice - once in 2011, and again in 2014.

  • It's just weird that two events happened so close to one another, and to a failed rocket launch.

  • In Hubble's case, it comes down to the failure of one of its gyroscopes,

  • which allows us to precisely orient the telescope.

  • During the last crewed service mission in 2009, astronauts installed 6 new gyroscopes,

  • but with the most recent breakdown, there are only three that still work.

  • Hubble only runs on three at a time, though, and the gyroscopes are going to break down over time.

  • This most recent one was in its death throes for the past year.

  • And if necessary, it is perfectly capable of running on just one.

  • So this mechanical failure isn't the end of the world; it's not even the end of Hubble.

  • Unfortunately, when we tried to switch Hubble over to its final backup gyro, the craft kept

  • reporting that it was rotating 100 times faster than it actually was.

  • Strangely, it's only the baseline rate that's off.

  • It is accurately reporting any changes in speed.

  • But it's enough of a problem that we can't use Hubble at the moment.

  • Chandra also had a gyroscope problem, although it seems to have just been a temporary glitch.

  • For three seconds, the gyroscope sent bad data

  • that made the computer think it was moving faster than it was.

  • The telescope seems to be back to normal now, but mission scientists

  • plan to keep an eye on that gyroscope for a while.

  • These satellite failures are really just a sign of NASA's

  • ageing soldiers in the battle to study the universe.

  • Chandra was launched in 1999, and Hubble in 1990.

  • Still, both telescopes are doing some amazing and great science up there,

  • so here's hoping we get at least a few more years out of them.

  • Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Space News!

  • Guess what? You are all invited to a livestream extravaganza!

  • This Monday, October 22nd, we are having an eight-hour-long livestream,

  • during which we will encourage people to join our Patreon, and we will maybe explode some pumpkins

  • and do trivia and experiments, and have a spooky science hour, and lots of other fun things.

  • Trust me, we have plans. Shenanigans begin at 1pm Eastern, over on the main SciShow channel.

  • Mark your calendars. We'll see you there!

  • [♪ OUTRO]

[♪ INTRO]

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