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A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a Glonass navigation satellite withstood a lightning strike seconds after liftoff Monday, and still delivered its payload to orbit.<\/p>\n
The Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in far northern Russia at 0623 GMT (2:23 a.m. EDT; 9:23 a.m. Moscow time) Monday, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.<\/p>\n
Seconds later, a bolt of lightning struck the kerosene-fueled launcher as it climbed away from Plesetsk, located in Russia\u2019s Arkhangelsk region around 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow.<\/p>\n
Rockets are known to trigger lightning as they ascend through thick clouds or thunderstorms. Famous past incidents of lightning striking a launch vehicle include the Apollo 12 moon mission\u2019s Saturn 5 rocket, which was hit by lightning twice in the first minute after liftoff from Florida in November 1969, with the discharge following the Saturn\u2019s exhaust plume to the ground.<\/p>\n
The lightning knocked offline the Apollo 12 command module\u2019s fuel cells and affected the spacecraft\u2019s instrumentation, but did not impact the Saturn 5 rocket\u2019s flight compute or guidance system. Thanks to quick thinking from mission control and the crew on-board, the mission was able to continue to the moon.<\/p>\n
An Atlas-Centaur rocket launched in 1987 was not so lucky. A lightning strike on the Atlas launcher, designated AC-67, about 49 seconds after liftoff resulted in a guidance system failure and the structural break-up of the rocket, destroying a U.S. Navy communications satellite.<\/p>\n
The Apollo 12 and AC-67 incidents led range personnel in the United States to institute tighter weather constraints on rocket launches.<\/p>\n
In a tweet congratulating Russian military and industrial teams on Monday\u2019s successful launch, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin wrote: \u201cLightning is not an obstacle for you.\u201d<\/p>\n