A senior Russian politician whose portfolio includes the country’s space program has blamed human error for a Nov. 28 launch failure that led to the destruction of a $45 million weather satellite and 18 secondary payloads, according to multiple news reports.

A Russian commander, his NASA co-pilot and the first Emirati to fly in space returned to Earth Thursday with a fiery re-entry inside the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft on the way to an on-target parachute-assisted landing in Kazakhstan at 6:59 a.m. EDT (1059 GMT), a few hours after undocking from the International Space Station.

Russia launched a next-generation military reconnaissance satellite Friday, ushering in an era of digital mapping from orbit after decades of relying on film returned to Earth inside landing capsules.