Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Russia’s most recent launch to the International Space Station was supposed to be nothing more than a familiar routine. For decades, the Soyuz has been the backbone of Russia’s human spaceflight program. It has flown through political turmoil, budget cuts, and global competition.
It has a reputation for reliability that even NASA respected for years—so much so that the United States depended entirely on Soyuz flights from 2011 to 2020 after the Space Shuttle retired. So when the latest mission lifted off in the early hours of the morning, there was no reason to expect anything unusual. Two Russian cosmonauts and one American astronaut climbed into their seats, and the Soyuz rose from the pad just as it has hundreds of times before.
But just seconds after liftoff, Something had gone terribly wrong with the launchpad itself.
Pad 31—one of Russia’s main launch sites for crewed missions—had taken a hit so severe that early images looked like the aftermath of an explosion. The support tower collapsed. Metal beams were twisted and scattered around the area. The concrete surfaces were cracked, torn, or simply missing. And the most shocking part was what happened underneath the rocket.
Russia’s most recent launch to the International Space Station was supposed to be nothing more than a familiar routine. For decades, the Soyuz has been the backbone of Russia’s human spaceflight program. It has flown through political turmoil, budget cuts, and global competition.
It has a reputation for reliability that even NASA respected for years—so much so that the United States depended entirely on Soyuz flights from 2011 to 2020 after the Space Shuttle retired. So when the latest mission lifted off in the early hours of the morning, there was no reason to expect anything unusual. Two Russian cosmonauts and one American astronaut climbed into their seats, and the Soyuz rose from the pad just as it has hundreds of times before.
But just seconds after liftoff, Something had gone terribly wrong with the launchpad itself.
Pad 31—one of Russia’s main launch sites for crewed missions—had taken a hit so severe that early images looked like the aftermath of an explosion. The support tower collapsed. Metal beams were twisted and scattered around the area. The concrete surfaces were cracked, torn, or simply missing. And the most shocking part was what happened underneath the rocket.
