On Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 27), a Russian Soyuz rocket launched three astronauts toward the International Space Station from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Everything seemed to go well. After all, the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft carrying that trio — NASA astronaut Chris Williams and cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev — docked with the orbiting lab safely that same day as planned.

But it turns out that there was an unusual amount of "blast" in the Soyuz's blastoff, considering the impact on the pad at Baikonur — Russia's only active pad that hosts crewed liftoffs to the International Space Station (ISS).

During routine post-launch inspections, "damage to several launch pad components was identified," officials with Russia's space agency Roscosmos said in a statement.

"The l

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