Russian Soyuz rocket suffers rare last-minute abort during launch of 3 astronauts to ISS

[WestMichRad]

https://www.space.com/soyuz-rocket-launch-abort-expedition71-astronauts

Update for 1 p.m. ET: The abort of today's Soyuz launch may have been due to a dead battery. "The reason has been identified, we just discovered at a meeting of the state commission that the reason was a voltage drop in the chemical current source," Roscosmos General Director Yuri Borisov said in a statement posted to the Russian space agency's Telegram account today.

A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying three astronauts bound for the International Space Station experienced a rare abort on the launch pad on Thursday (March 21) while the crew waited expectantly inside their spacecraft.

The abort occurred just 21 seconds before the Soyuz rocket was to launch NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus to the International Space Station (ISS) from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liftoff was scheduled for 9:21 a.m. EDT (1321 GMT).

Not much else provided at link. A NASA spokesperson said that the next opportunity for launch would be “Saturday morning“, pending resolution of today’s problem.

I’m wondering what the purpose is of having a “spaceflight participant “ on the mission.

[JoseBalow]

1. Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus won a competition

to become become the first Belarusian woman in space. She's a flight attendant, not a trained cosmonaut.

In December 2022, during a competitive selection held in Belarus, she was selected among six applicants from more than three thousand women to participate in a space flight under the "Belarusian Woman in Space" project on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ISS for a short duration mission. This contest was organised by Belarus Academy of Sciences. The other five were another flight attendant, two doctors, and two scientists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Vasilevskaya

[WestMichRad]

2. Thanks for the info!