Great job by the Russian company!

Take-off of the aborted spaceflight

They are saying sabotage!

Though, that may be political.

I doubt that very much! But it is fashionable to be anti Russian.

No, the Russians are claiming sabotage!

Russia launches criminal investigation into cause

While the two men landed safely, the aborted mission dealt another blow to the troubled Russian space program.

It also was the first such accident for Russia's manned program in over three decades.

As a result, Russia has launched a criminal investigation into the rocket failure.

Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said Russia would fully share all relevant information with the US, which pays up to $82 million per ride to the space station.

"I hope that the American side will treat it with understanding," he said.

Relations between Moscow and Washington have sunk to post-Cold War lows over conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, and allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential vote, but they have kept cooperating in space.

ABC News

Russian rocket failure is 'extremely suspicious'

UNSW Executive Director of Space Engineering Warwick Holmes says the Russian rocket failure was 'extremely suspicious'.

Read more from ABC News

Those guys are amazing!

BepiColombo mission blasts off to Mercury

An ambitious new mission has launched off to Mercury, our inner-most planet.

The BepiColombo mission, which lifted off from French Guiana, is a joint project between the European and Japanese space agencies.

If it is successful, it will be only the third space mission to get up close and personal with this mysterious world.

"It's a hard place to get to, and it's a really harsh environment," said Glen Nagle from the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, which will play a role tracking the mission.

So hard that it will take seven years to get there, and a lot of circle work in the inner solar system to catch up with its target, before going into orbit around Mercury in December, 2025.

"It's certainly the most ambitious [mission] the Europeans have flown," he said.

What are we trying to find out?

The BepiColombo mission will take up where NASA's Messenger mission left off.

The Messenger spacecraft was the first spacecraft to orbit around Mercury.

Between 2011 and 2015 it mapped the planet's surface, discovered hints of water and other organic compounds and measured its magnetic field.

"It could really only get decent high resolution views of the northern hemisphere of Mercury.

"The BepiColombo mission can take a better look, a much higher resolution view of the surface of the planet, and tell us a little bit more about its interaction with the sun."

It could also tell us more about the planet's interior and its weird magnetic field.

"One of the mysteries that Messenger came up with is that this planet has a large iron core," Mr Nagle said.

"On Earth [the same size core] would generate our magnetic field from the centre of the planet, but for some reason it seems that Mercury's magnetic field has shifted by about 20 per cent from the core of the planet."

And then there are the tantalising hints of water ice at the planet's polar caps.

"BepiColombo will be in a polar orbit, so it will look directly down into those deep shadowed craters where we think water ice could exist," Mr Nagle said.

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