Just before takeoff, the launch of the Russian spacecraft Soyuz was cancelled

NEW DELHI: Just seconds before it was due to take off on Thursday, Russia’s Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft’s planned flight to the International Space Station (ISS) was suddenly cancelled. The spaceship was scheduled to launch from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur spaceport and carry astronauts from Belarus, Russia, and the United States.
It was cancelled at exactly 4:21 p.m. Moscow time (1321 GMT) because the engines did not fire, stopping the countdown at a crucial juncture while the crew members were safely inside the spaceship.

At the launch complex, pay attention. The launch was automatically cancelled. In a live broadcast provided by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, the flight controller said, “Bring the units of the launch complex to the initial state.”
NASA said that the abort occurred at “the T minus 20 second mark,” matching the Russian broadcast. The agency attributed the pause to an issue with the “engine sequence start,” which resulted in an “automatic command to abort the countdown.”
The head of Roscosmos, Yury Borisov, said that the “voltage dip” in the chemical power source during the last few seconds before launch was the cause of the abrupt stop. Notwithstanding the glitch, Borisov said that the launch will now take place on Saturday and reassured that it was only a natural element of the unpredictable nature of space operations.
This accident exacerbates the difficulties Moscow’s long-standing but faltering space programme faces. It has lately seen a number of setbacks, such as the disappearance of a lunar mission and repeated coolant leaks on the Russian section of the International Space Station.
But the crew of the aborted Soyuz MS-25 mission, which included Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus, Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos, and Tracy Caldwell Dyson of NASA, was certified safe and extricated from the ship after the unsuccessful launch.
Russian Soyuz missions have faced fresh competition from the US’s alliance with SpaceX, ending Russia’s monopoly on human space launches. Previously, the only conveyors to the International Space Station (ISS) after NASA’s Space Shuttle programme concluded were Russia.
The world’s space community watches as Roscosmos attempts to salvage its reputation with the next postponed mission, hoping to keep its standing in the cutthroat field of space exploration.