Added 1 new A* page:High drama on the edge of space today as a Russian Soyuz rocket with an American and a Russian on-board launched toward the International Space Station from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan: a malfunction of some kind occurred with the booster rocket between the first and second separation stages, the rocket's emergency escape system, at the nose of the rocket, deployed, taking the small Soyuz capsule, with the two men aboard, on a steep descent back to the ground, and they landed successfully about 500 km from the launch site.
Russia has now grounded their Soyuz fleet while they try to figure out what went wrong, and how to prevent it from happening again.
The BBC article on the incident notes that the last Soyuz launch accident was way back in 1983, when a rocket caught fire on the launch pad: a dramatic photo of the deployment of that rocket's emergency escape system above the exploding rocket booster can be seen here.
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