You'll recall that the story broke on Black Friday (last Friday in November) that in the aftermath of the successful launch of the Crewed Soyuz flight to the International Space Station, Roscosmos discovered some substantial damage to the launch pad. Briefly, a large platform under the rocket, with a mass of about 20 metric tons was apparently not secured prior to launch, and the launch vehicle's thrust knocked it into the flame trench.
Word broke today that NASA is moving up launches of SpaceX Cargo Dragons scheduled for later in '26 due to the uncertainties of not knowing when the Soyuz pad will be usable again.
According to the space agency’s internal schedule, the next Dragon supply mission, CRS-34, is moving forward one month from June 2026 to May. And the next Dragon supply mission after this, CRS-35, has been advanced three months from November to August.
To grab a paragraph from my original piece on this accident, Russia has "plenty of launch pads" in Russia, Kazkhstan and former republics of the USSR; the issue is that Site 31 at Baikonur is the country’s only pad presently configured to handle launches of the Soyuz rocket and the two spacecraft critical to space station operations: their manned Soyuz vehicle and their unmanned Progress cargo drones.
NASA has more options than Russia, by far. It's probably fair to say that SpaceX doesn't need mentioning, since they do more launches than any other launch service in the world - and more than most of them combined. NASA has Northrop Grumman, and their Progress cargo vehicle. Progress has been out of service for a while and SpaceX has been launching Grumman's Cygnus cargo ships until the replacement for the rocket that Grumman has contracted for is delivered. Cygnus could fly on that booster as early as April '26. Don't forget Japan has a new cargo ship as well, HTV-X, which could deliver supplies in the summer of '26.
It is by no means certain that Russia will be able to fix the Site 31 launch infrastructure during the next four months. The average temperature during winter months is typically well below 0 degrees Celsius, and the country’s economic and industrial resources have largely been devoted to a war against Ukraine, rather than civil activities such as human spaceflight.
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So for NASA and the international partnership that operates the space station, the damage at Site 31 is unlikely to become acute unless work is delayed into next fall—when Progress vehicles will be needed for propellant delivery and Soyuz spacecraft to relieve the crew in orbit.
Technicians work on the pad in Baikonur with the fully fueled Soyuz rocket. Credit: NASA TV
The real kicker here? SpaceX is the only company that can accelerate and change launch schedules with no real issues. Just name the date and the payload and they'll be able to do it.
ReplyDeleteCan Northrup build their cargo unit quick enough to cover loss of Soyuz/Progress? No. No they can not. They are not set up for rapid production/refurbishment like SpaceX is. They are set up for low-level production at a fixed schedule and can only probably shift that schedule by 10% at most.
Can the Japanese build and launch their cargo unit quickly enough? Maybe, but most likely not. Because they also are not set up for rapid production like SpaceX is. Given it's Japan, they might be able to accelerate the pace by 20%, but their cargo unit requires their launch vehicle, so... well...
As to the Russian platform, again, they're not SpaceX. They are not set up for rapid shifts and rapid deconstruction/construction like SpaceX is. The Russians are using the same launch platform last modified/updated decades ago, and only being maintained by a small number of service personnel. The Russians do not have the trained teams of workers that SpaceX does, because the Russians haven't really built anything in, what, 30, 40 years?
As to the launch pad, if SpaceX was in charge, they'd make a giant tent over everything (take them 2 weeks to do) and then have that platform chopped out, fixed and reassembled or replaced in 2 months. Just look at how quickly they chopped Pad 1 down, and that thing was built with concrete-filled legs and everyone was expecting them to still be working on the legs till well into January. Instead it looks like SpaceX will have the hole mostly done for the new flame diverter/launch pad by mid-January, ready to pound (if not already pounded) all the support piling for the new launch pad.
Blue Origins can't accelerate their launch vehicle construction process. They are still working on ramping up production of all the components of their New Glenn system. Including BE4 and BE3 engines.
ULA can't accelerate their launch vehicle construction process because they are definitely not set up for rapid mass construction. And even if they did, they are relying on BO for the BE4 engines. They could have 30 Vulcans sitting around and it doesn't matter one lick if there are no BE4 engines available.
That BE4 bottleneck is really going to bite BO and ULA in their collective asses.
The real interesting thing will be to see if Roscosmos buys Crewed Dragon flights to replace expected Soyuz launches, or will they just let NASA handle it all?
Once again, SpaceX will make the impossible and improbable seem positively normal. All while setting new records every launch, if not every day.