[SatNews] Much investigation and work is underway as... International Space Station (ISS) Program managers are working to re-align resupply and crew rotation manifests following last week’s launch failure of the Progress M-12M/44P spacecraft. The failure of the Soyuz-U booster’s third stage grounded both the Soyuz-U rockets used to launch cargo, and the Soyuz-FG rockets used to launch crews, since both rockets share very similar third stages.

The Russian space agency Roscosmos is currently investigating the cause of the Soyuz-U third stage failure, as well as the unrelated failure of the Briz-M upper stage of a Proton-M launch vehicle that failed the week prior to the Progress M-12M failure, which led to the grounding of all Proton-M rockets.

With impressive speed, Roscosmos have already identified the cause of both the Soyuz-U third stage and Proton-M Briz-M upper stage failures.

The Proton-M/Briz-M failure, which resulted in the loss of the Express-AM4 satellite, has been attributed to a time interval that was too short to manoeuvre a gyroscope platform into the correct position, causing an error in the Briz-M guidance system, which in turn pointed the Briz-M upper stage in the incorrect orientation, which resulted in the Express-AM4 satellite being placed in an off-nominal orbit.

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