The biggest launch failures (and recoveries) of 2021 Blue Origin's 1st New Shepard passenger launch with Jeff Bezos And the lengthy list of 2021 mishaps includes launch failures by Rocket Lab's Electron booster and India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, as well as Russia's Kosmos 2551 spy satellite, which failed to adjust its orbit properly after a smooth liftoff. One of Astra's rockets failed in June, for example, resulting in the loss of two hurricane-studying NASA cubesats. This is not to pick on the shuttle program we could cite many other incidents to make the same point. The other - Columbia, in February 2003 - took place when the orbiter was coming home to Earth. One of those tragedies - the Challenger explosion, in January 1986 - occurred during launch. It suffered catastrophic failures during two of its 135 missions, killing 14 astronauts. Think of NASA's iconic space shuttle program. The spacecraft side of things is no picnic, either the space environment is harsh, and vehicles coming back to Earth experience extremes of velocity and temperature that can expose the slightest design or manufacturing flaw, sometimes to tragic effect. Rockets are complex machines riding controlled explosions high into the sky, and the slightest problem can knock "controlled" out of that equation. But the possibility of failure should always be in the back of our minds. In-flight failures are always startling, given the dramatic visuals that accompany them and the investment of time and money that each one incinerates.
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