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When a Soyuz rocket took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday at 04:47 EDT (08:47 GMT), everything seemed to be going well – but if not, search and rescue teams were deployed in the region, ready to go to the action.
And that's what they did when, a few minutes after the launch of October 11, the rocket brought NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin to the International Space Station. The launch was automatically canceled, resulting in an emergency ballistic return of the two crew members.
"As we could expect, everyone was calm and overcame emergencies at their best, and it was good to see," Space.com told astronaut. The NASA. "Everything seemed to be going pretty well." [In Photos: Space Station Crew’s Harrowing Abort Landing After Soyuz Launch Failure]
Search and rescue teams, including helicopters, are deployed in targeted and emergency landing zones as a routine measure at each launch and landing with crew, including the return of the aircraft. 39, space station team. Credit: Bill Ingalls / NASA
Chiao performed three space shuttle missions, then drove a Soyuz capsule to the space station for a six-month stay in the orbiting lab. His launches and landings went well, but he knows what happens when something goes wrong: during his last flight, his Soyuz suffered an anomaly about 200 meters from the space station and began to accelerate instead to slow down. down.
"We almost thought ahead and started working on the problem," he said. He and his two teammates had released their emergency manuals and detailed instructions from the standard procedure, and they were ready to deal with the crisis. "Once you are safe, it is at that moment that you take a deep breath and that the hairs on the nape stand up," he said.
This is thanks to the rigorous training that all astronauts undergo before launch. "You spend most of your time on emergency and dysfunction procedures, and that's because these are the things that will bite you," Chiao said. "You want to be able to run them by reflex."
Thus, Hague and Ovchinin acted reflexively, triggering the ballistic retraction mode that would quickly remove them from the disturbed aircraft and all the fuel it was carrying. Once the landing process started, it took them a little more than half an hour to land.
But the search and rescue teams were already ready to locate them and help them get out of their pod well before the rocket took off. NASA confirmed that for launches from Baikonur, the preparation of teams around these areas was primarily the responsibility of the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos.
"The SAR [search and rescue] The procedures are mainly handled by the Roscosmos team, but of course, the appropriate international partners participate and support the crew members of their agency, "said NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries , in an email to Space.com, information about the process.
Astronaut Nick Hague and his wife, Catie Hague, greet each other after its tumultuous launch.
Credit: Bill Ingalls / NASA
As any launch is carefully designed, it is possible to calculate where the crew members could land based on where they should pull the trigger and separate from the rocket. For a landing crew, the mission staff draws a circle in which the crew must land if they deploy the parachutes as intended, depending on the strength of the wind and its direction. The prediction of this area is of course more complicated for ballistic returns during launches and landings. [Soyuz Landing Photos: Expedition 49 Returns to Earth]
"This circle will be bigger at first," Chiao said, pointing to a 2003 landing that plunged the astronauts about 440 km off the track. But it is still possible. "They'll be organizing a rescue team with helicopters ready to go looking for those guys if they have to swing."
This means that mission staff can deploy crews to the targeted landing zone and to areas where a ballistic return would bring the crew back. When he landed on a Soyuz in 2005, Chiao said that the team that had met him and his colleagues probably numbered around 50 people, including medical personnel, helicopter pilots, and people responsible for helping astronauts get out of the capsule.
Happy that our friends are well. Thanks to the rescue forces of more than 1000 SAR professionals! Today, we have once again shown how much the vehicle #Soyuz is to be able to protect the crew from such a failure. Space flight is difficult. And we must continue to try for the benefit of humanity.# Exp57 # SoyuzMS10 pic.twitter.com/Gylnn98UE9
– Alexander Gerst (@Astro_Alex) October 11, 2018
A tweet posted by astronaut Alexander Gerst, currently aboard the space station, thanked the search and rescue teams for their pickup work from Hague and Ovchinin, claiming that more than 1,000 people were present in the area. Chiao said that number seemed plausible, as several different teams are posted in different places.
And after the anomaly, he stated that the landing of Hague and Ovchinin had proceeded smoothly. NASA said the search and rescue teams were able to meet them at the landing and that the astronauts were quickly removed from the capsule to check their condition.
This is not always the case. "Historically, in the Russian experience, there have been quite dramatic search and rescue events," said Chiao. "Rescue forces have done incredible things over the years."
This is not just about the landing that has affected hundreds of miles of course. One capsule did not land in an unexpected place, crashed into a forest, hurtled down a mountain and only a parachute hanging from a tree prevented it from falling off a cliff. The astronauts had to spend the night in the forest, then go out on skis. It's because of the wolves that they heard howling during the night that the Soyuz capsules are stocked with pistols.
On another occasion, a capsule passed through a frozen lake and overturned, leaving astronauts on board hanging from straps for hours. Rescue teams found them and removed the capsule from the water, but it was so heavy that it continued to hit the surface of the ice. Rescuers expected the astronauts could not survive the experiment – but that's the case.
And as to whether the incident has shaken his confidence in the safety of space travel, Chiao said he was not concerned.
"This activity is not without risk, and will never be safe if you sit on all that fuel, these high speed turbo pumps and fire," Chiao said. And he predicted that the next launch would be even safer than usual. "You can bet that everyone involved will be extremely careful at the next launch because of this incident."
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her. @meghanbartels. follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook. Original article on Space.com.
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