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MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's space agency denied Saturday that an astronaut could have flown drunk aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from its Baikonur cosmodrome, reacting to allegations reported by the chairman of an independent U.S. panel on astronaut health.
The panel chairman, Air Force Col. Richard Bachmann Jr., said Friday it was told about multiple instances involving alcohol. One of the two most detailed cases involved an astronaut drinking heavily before flying on a Soyuz spacecraft headed to the International Space Station, he said. He cited unverified interviews, saying it was not the panel's mission to investigate the allegations.
"We categorically deny the possibility that this could have happened at Baikonur," Igor Panarin, spokesman for the Russian Space Agency, Roskosmos, told The Associated Press. "In the days at Baikonur before the launch, this is absolutely impossible. They are constantly watched by medics and psychiatrists."
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