The picture (L) shows how lightning struck Russian's Soyuz 2-1b rocket. (Image via: Daily Express)

Lightning Strikes Soyuz Rocket

Mirny - Mother Nature shows herself a douche once more. Looking back to the incident between wind and SpaceX, when Elon Musk even had to give in to Nature’s sovereignty, now Mother Nature shows its power again by going old testament over Russian’s Soyuz Rocket.

The mission was a success eventually. Soyuz rocket blasted off from launching pad 4 at Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Mirny, Arkhangelsk Oblast, North Russia, on Monday (27/5) at 9.23 a.m Moscow time. The rocket type was Soyuz 2-1b rocket, the most revolutionary rocket from the Soyuz series.

The objective for the rocket was to deliver a GLONASS-M (Global Navigation Satellite System) satellite, assisted by Fregat-M, to earth orbit in order to prolong worldwide navigation service for the Russians.

Amidst the launch, the rocket was struck by lightning. It was true that the weather was cloudy and a bit unusual to deploy rocket in that kind of weather. But it is Russian. It seems like Mother Nature does not want any additional bug to surround its head again.

“Weather is not a challenge, and we are weather-proof,” asserted Major General Nikolai Nestechuk, chief of Plesetsk Cosmodrome.

Fortunately for the Russians, the rocket did not suffer any damage, and it successfully delivered the GLONASS satellite to replenish the old satellite on time. There are approximately 26 GLONASS satellites on the Earth’s medium orbit, and most of which are still functional, in spite of old age.

This was not the first case of lightning versus rocket. In 1969, the lightning struck the USA’s Saturn V rocket twice!

A bit of explanation regarding GLONASS, it is a navigation system equivalent to GPS (USA), Gallileo (Europe) or BaiDou (China). It emits 4 navigation signals for military and civilian use. The project was first founded in 1970s in the era of Soviet Union. It took over 2 decades to make the GLONASS project fully operational. Since its first operation, then all the leaders of Russia started to take care of the project with careful attention.

Source: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/243830/20190528/lightning-strikes-russian-soyuz-rocket-during-satellite-launch.htm