London

Russian engineers are urgently trying to determine the cause of the accident that wrecked a Soyuz rocket shortly after take-off on 15 October, killing a soldier and destroying its payload, a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite.

A modified version of the same type of launcher is due to take three cosmonauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Russian space-agency officials have delayed the launch until 31 October to allow for their investigation.

Soyuz is viewed as a relatively cheap workhorse, and has been used to ferry people and equipment to the ISS about a dozen times since the beginning of last year. The unmanned version of the Soyuz launcher has a history of problems, although the more advanced manned rocket has an excellent safety record.

“No expense is spared when humans travel to space,” says Georgy Poleshuk, deputy director of the Russian Space Agency.

The accident, which occurred about 20 seconds after lift-off from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, 750 miles north of Moscow, showered the launch site and surrounding area with burning debris. The results of the accident investigation should be known this week. Early reports suggest that one of the rocket's first-stage engines failed to ignite.

The launcher was carrying Foton-M1, an ESA research satellite. “One of the advantages of this satellite was that some of the more delicate experiments could be placed on-board just a few hours before launch, so we had a number of researchers on-site at the time,” says Dieter Isakeit, manager of ESA's ISS User Center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

All of the researchers were a safe distance away when the explosion took place, although a 20-year-old Russian soldier was killed and eight others were injured.

The satellite, which was designed for a 15-day mission, was carrying dozens of experiments covering a wide range of disciplines, including biology, crystal growth and exobiology.

Martin Miller, a space researcher at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, is part of a team that was aiming to investigate how meteorites burn up in the atmosphere. “Although in monetary terms our experiment was pretty small beer, this will cause significant delays and disruption to our research,” he says.