Behind the beautiful Soyuz launch: overcoming a communications emergency

Posted on: Apr. 10th, 2006 || Source: thespacereview.com | E-mail Article | Print Article

Behind the scenes of the beautiful blastoff two weeks ago of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with three men headed towards the International Space Station, a critical communications blackout hit Mission Control in Moscow. That emergency quickly passed without any harm to the mission or the crew.

And while the incident again raises the old issue of the bigger “blackout” of long-standing Russian reluctance to occasionally keep its American partners fully informed of potential problems, this new incident provides evidence that things really are getting better. Mission Control in Houston had been apprised of the problem in real time and received all the information it needed to make its own decisions.

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