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MOSCOW, Russia – Following a horrifying accident in October, in which a Russian rocket failed to launch and forced the astronauts to abort their mission – Russia is already preparing for a new manned mission to space. 

Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has announced in a statement that the country’s first manned mission to the International Space Station since the October 11 rocket failure, might take off on December 3.

Russia’s state news agency TASS quoted Sergei Krikalyov, Executive Director of the Manned Spaceflight Program at Roskosmos as saying that the next manned launch had been planned for mid-December.

Krikalyov pointed out that Russia was trying hard to pre-pone the mission so as to ensure that a crew is present on the ISS.  

He said, “In order to avoid shifting the ISS to an unmanned mode, the industry is exerting considerable efforts to make the launch possible on December 3.”

Further, Krikalyov estimated that the three-person crew currently working aboard the ISS may return home on December 20.

He said, “The industry is making significant efforts to move the launch to December 3 so that the station does not switch to autopilot mode, and landing is expected around December 20.”

In the horrific launch accident last month, a two-man Russian-American crew bound for the ISS were forced to abort their mission and perform an emergency landing.

Miraculously, the space capsule carrying the Russian cosmonaut Aleksei Ovchinin and a U.S. astronaut Nick Hague landed safely in Kazakhstan, with both of them managing to escape before a launchpad explosion.

Experts noted at the time that since 1983, the accident was the first serious launch problem experienced by a manned Soyuz space mission, in which the crew survived.

While making its announcement on Wednesday, weeks after the accident, Roscomos finally revealed that a faulty sensor was to blame for the incident. 

Krikalyov explained in a statement, “At the moment of separation [of the rocket’s first and second stages], one of the lateral first-stage engines was not ejected far enough and hit the propellant tank of the second stage, which caused the tank’s rupture.”