Fears for space station after Soyuz explosion

Doubts were raised about the future of Russia's ailing space programme yesterday after an unmanned rocket carrying a research satellite exploded on takeoff, killing one Russian soldier on the ground and wounding eight others.

The cause of the explosion, which partly destroyed the launch pad, is unclear, but the authorities immediately announced a criminal investigation, suspecting negligence.

The 300-tonne Soyuz-U rocket exploded 29 seconds after takeoff from the Plesetsk launch site, 400 miles north of Moscow, late on Tuesday night. A mission control officer told Reuters that it was the first accident involving the Soyuz booster rocket for 11 years.

The rocket is similar to the one scheduled to send personnel to the international space station (ISS) on October 28, although Sergei Gorbunov, spokesman for Russia's space authority, said there were no plans to delay the mission.

The fallout will be felt across Russia's cash-strapped space programme which announced late last month that it might have to withdraw from the £60bn ISS because Moscow could not meet its financial obligations. To raise funds, Energia, the Russian corporation coordinating the ISS project, already takes "space tourists" to the orbiting station, at £13m per trip.

The rocket launched yesterday was carrying a Foton-M satellite intended as an orbital laboratory.

Officials used the accident to express concerns at Moscow's persistent under-funding. Yelena Kondakova, a female astronaut and engineer who is also an MP, said: "We can't speak concretely about the causes of this explosion ... But our industry is in decline. The minister in charge of the industry, Ilya Klebanov, is not up to the job, and doesn't do enough to protect our interests."

Ms Kondakova said she feared for the future, claiming that with the budget already drawn up, the government was unwilling to hand over extra money. She also feared production quality could fall because fewer Soyuz-U rockets were being made: "You drive a car better the more you use it. It is the same in production."

Mr Gorbunov admitted that the Russian agency's finances had been crippled by the collapse in demand for commercial satellite launches. "As a result our budget has fallen greatly. Unfortunately we cannot ask the state for more than it can give us. The first victims [of these budget cuts] are the Soyuz-U boosters and the manned Soyuz spaceships."

But he said that the Soyuz-U rocket slightly differed from the manned spaceship, and that the latter were checked scrupulously.

Only 37 out of the Soyuz-U's 1,000 launches had failed, he said. "This is the best record in the world. Everyone has accidents - even the most developed countries."

The main launch site for Russia's space programme is at Baikonur in Kazakhstan, in former Soviet central Asia, which Moscow leases from its neighbour, although it has been trying to shift launches to its own site at Plesetsk.

The extent of Energia's cash crisis was exposed last month when its company director, Valeri Riumin, wrote to his Nasa counterpart, Bill Gerstenmaier, suggesting the station might close as Moscow was unable to pay its part of the bill.

Nasa, also facing severe budget cuts, wants to cut its contribution, a move which prompted the European Space Agency to threaten the same.

US and Russian experts will discuss the station's future at a special summit in December.