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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Humans are to blame for the October failure of the Soyuz rocket:

Roscosmos: An assembly error doomed our Soyuz, but we promise it won't happen again [theregister.co.uk]

The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has completed its investigation into October's Soyuz mishap in record time, pointing the finger of blame at problems during assembly.

Mutterings emitted from the space agency earlier this week [theregister.co.uk] suggested that the issue was related to a sensor that detects stage separation of the booster. In yesterday's press conference, Roscosmos provided a few more details and shared a terrifying video showing the moment things went bad for the Soyuz. It then gave the green light for putting a crew back on the thing next month.

The actual explosion was, according to the State Commission tasked with getting to the bottom of the mess, caused by one of the side boosters not separating correctly and striking the rocket core. This led to the depressurisation of a fuel tank and the loss of control of the booster. The problems start at 1:23 in the video.

Of course, the real question is why did the separation fail? The answer, according to Roscosmos [roscosmos.ru], was a failure to open a nozzle at the top of the strap-on booster to vent its tank. This meant the booster did not separate cleanly. The nozzle failure was caused by a faulty contact sensor, which had been "bent" during assembly of the Soyuz at the Baikonur cosmodrome.

Also at Inverse [inverse.com].

Previously: Soyuz Crew Vehicle Fails Mid-Flight, Astronauts OK [soylentnews.org]
Soyuz Failure Narrowed Down to Collision Between Booster and Core Stage [soylentnews.org]

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