ISS rocket crew failed after launch, crew safe

ISS rocket crew failed after launch, crew safety © Kirill Kudryavtsev, AFP | The Russian spacecraft Soyuz MS-10 carrying members of the ISS 57/58 expedition, Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague take off from October 11, 2018 at the cosmodrome rented by Russia to Baikonur.

A rocket carrying a Soyuz spacecraft with a Russian and American astronaut heading for the International Space Station failed on Thursday, forcing the crew to make an emergency landing.

The US-Russian crew of a Soyuz spacecraft that took him to the International Space Station in orbit had to make a spectacular emergency landing in Kazakhstan on Thursday after failing in full flight.

Astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin landed safely and the rescue teams that rushed to locate them in the Kazakh steppe were quickly connected, said NASA, the US Space Agency and Russian Roscosmos.

LIFT-OFF! Shooting in the sky at 4:40 am (ET), the rocket Soyuz and Alexey Ovchinin leave the Earth after six hours of travel in orbit. Watch:

NASA ()

The Soyuz capsule that carried them separated from the defective rocket and did what is called a steep ballistic descent with parachutes helping to slow down its speed. Paratroopers parachuted into the rescue site, TASS news agency reported.

Neither of the two men needed medical treatment and said the two were fine.

The problem arose when an extra rocket from the Soyuz-FG launcher, launched from the Soviet-era Baikonur cosmodrome in the country of Central Asia, failed, said the NASA.

Alexey Ovchinin, of the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos (left), and NASA's Nick Hague (right), members of the Expedition 57 crew, take up seats in front of the Saikouz MS-10 ship at the last preparatory training session of September 26, 2018

Luigi Pizzimenti ()

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov, quoted by Interfax, said the problem arose when the first and second phases of the booster rocket were being separated.

Images filmed inside the Soyuz show the two men agitated at the moment of failure, arms and legs restless.

Rescue teams quickly reached the site where Hague and Ovchinine descended, Russian news agencies reported.

"The rescue forces are in communication with Nick Hague and Alexei Ovchinin and we hear that they are in good condition," NASA TV said.

Russia immediately suspended all manned space launches, reported the RIA news agency, and Roscomosmos chief, Dmitry Rogozin, said that he had ordered the creation of a commission of 39 State to investigate what was wrong.

The failure is a setback for the Russian space program and the latest in a series of incidents.

In August, a Soyuz capsule already docked at the ISS revealed a hole that caused a brief loss of atmospheric pressure and needed repair. Rogozin said it could have been a "sabotage".

American space plans

For the moment, the United States is counting on Moscow to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) launched 20 years ago. NASA is tentatively considering sending its first crew to the ISS using a SpaceX spacecraft instead of a Soyuz next April.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the most important thing was that both men were alive.

Launched in 1998, the ISS is a man-made habitable satellite in low Earth orbit used to perform scientific and space tests. It can accommodate a crew of six people maximum.

"The rescue services are working since the first second of the accident," wrote Rogozin on Twitter. "The emergency rescue systems of the MS-Soyuz Space Shuttle operated smoothly. The crew was saved.

A Reuters reporter, who observed the launch about 1 km away, said that the operation had gone well early and that the rocket failure was due to occur. to be produced at higher altitudes.

Last November, Roscosmos lost with a new weather satellite – the Meteor-M – after exploding the new Russian cosmodrome Vostochny in the Far East. Rogozin said at the time that the launch of the satellite at 2.6 billion rubles (39.02 million dollars) was due to an embarrassing programming error.

(Reuters)