by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

Ambitious launch schedules typically go awry when a rocket suffers a catastrophic failure that takes months to investigate and implement modifications to ensure the same accident doesn’t happen again. In the majority of cases, the failures involve a machine launching a machine. All that can be replaced, albeit at substantial cost.

Russia’s ambitious launch plans for 2022 fell apart due to a far more momentous and deadly action: the nation’s invasion of Ukraine. The decision ruptured cooperation with the West on virtually every space project on which it was safe to do so. The main exception was the International Space Station (ISS), a program involving astronauts and cosmonauts that would be difficult to operate safely if Russia suddenly withdrew (as it indeed threatened to do).

Due to the invasion, Western partners canceled seven launches of foreign payloads in less than a month. The cancellations put Russia even further behind the United States and China in launch totals this year.

MOSCOW (Roscosmos PR) — In accordance with the Russian flight program of the International Space Station, on October 30, 2021, at 04:31:19 Moscow time, the Progress MS-18 transport cargo vehicle was docked. The operations of docking and docking to the Zvezda service module were carried out automatically under the control of specialists from the Mission Control Center of TsNIIMash, the Main Operational Control Group of the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation named after S.P. Korolev (part of the Roscosmos State Corporation) and the Russian crew members of the ISS-66, Roscosmos cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov.

BAIKONUR COSMODROME, Kazakhstan (Roscosmos PR) — In accordance with the approved Russian schedule of flights to the International Space Station, today, October 28, 2021 the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket with the Progress MS-18 cargo spacecraft launched successfully at 00:00:32 UTC from Launchpad 6 (Vostok) of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. In 8 minutes 48 seconds after liftoff the spacecraft and the third stage of the carrier separation was confirmed, the solar panels and antennas were deployed.