Internal NASA Documents Give Clues to Scary Soyuz Return Flight

The fire could have been started by the main heat shield, which was jettisoned several kilometers up to expose the soft-landing engines. But other sources of ignition include the engines themselves, the separation pyros on the parachute lines, or even flammable chemicals leaking from the cabin. The fire was close enough to quickly consume the craft's own parachute. But photographs show it did not burn the grass around the nose of the spacecraft.

The investigation board is faced with explaining this landing and with comparing it to earlier problems, including hauntingly similar anomalies on a previous Soyuz landing last October. Of immediate concern is the question of whether the Soyuz currently attached to the station--and its new crew of Sergei Volkov, Oleg Kononenko, and Garrett Reisman--is in danger.

After decades of service, it's hard to imagine that the Soyuz has a design flaw of any significance, so the issue here may instead be fabrication quality. This is a frightening possibility, since the Soyuz manufacturer, the Energia Korolev Rocket and Space Corp., in Moscow, has had to double its Soyuz production rate in preparation for the increase of the space station crew from three to six people next year. This extra workload is being borne by an aging workforce.

The political implications of the problem are also profound, since NASA's current plans are to ground the shuttle fleet in 2010 and then buy tickets on Soyuz missions to the space station until the new-generation Orion spacecraft becomes available around 2015. All of these plans are now open to debate, right in the middle of a U.S. presidential election campaign.