It looks like NASA and U.S. military has bought dud rockets from Russia, due to the risk of these things blowing up. The problem comes from the use of cheap metals in building these rockets.
According to a report from The Daily Caller Foundation, NASA brings crew and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) using Russia's Soyuz rocket and Proton booster. The U.S. military is also using parts of the Russian rockets when they launch satellites in space.
The report adds that both designs have been recalled in Russia due to metal design flaws. Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb reports that Komemersant newspaper found out, after a recent firing test, that the metal flaw can be found in the rocket's engines.
"The failure of the engine was reportedly traced to an illegal replacement of precious heat-resistant alloys within the engine's components with less expensive but failure-prone materials," the newspaper said. This report is similar to the results of the 2015 Proton failure investigations.
Zak adds that Igor Komarov, the head of Roskosmos, led a meeting with the top managers of Voronezh Mechanical Plant (V.M.P.), which manufactures the flawed rockets. During the meeting, Komarov recalled dozens of Proton engines that were built by V.M.P. over the years and came up with several decisions to improve the production quality of the company.
The findings of the investigations and the tests have grounded Russia's main space transportation systems, the Proton and the Soyuz, according to Zak. The Proton could possibly begin launching again in June or July, but this is under optimistic scenarios.
Zak said the grounding is bad news for Russia as competition for the commercial launch market is increasing. This is forcing the country to prioritise getting their fleet up to quality standards to get back in the market before the competition overtakes them. Check out the video of the failure of the Soyuz rocket launch in the video below.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
