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Nick Hague has passed 20 years dreaming in space, first as an Air Force test pilot, then as a NASA astronaut since 2013. He had his great chance to take off in orbit on Friday aboard of a Soyuz spacecraft taking off from the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The cosmopolitan Russian Aleksey Ovchinin and The Hague were waiting for a six-hour routine flight to the International Space Station, but two minutes after take-off, something went wrong. The crew capsule where they were sitting began to shake, the huge booster having failed to separate properly from the upper stage of the rocket.
"It went from normal to something that was not going very fast," Hague said in his first interview about the event aired this morning on NASA's Facebook page. "The first thing I noticed was to be shaking pretty violently from one side to the other. Then there was an alarm in the capsule and a light. I knew once I saw the light that we had an emergency with the boosters. "
The Soyuz MS-10 capsule deployed an emergency abandonment system that separated it from the recall, placing Hague and Ovchinin safe. "At that time, I knew we were not going to go into orbit," Hague said. "The mission has changed so that we can return to the field as safely as possible.
The speed of escape resulted in forces almost seven times heavier than the normal 5 g felt by astronauts during a normal launch. Then, when the capsule reached its highest point above the ground, The Hague witnessed the darkness of the space and the curvature of the Earth through a porthole. The objects in the capsule began to float for a few seconds of weightlessness.
"I looked out the window and realized that I was getting close to it," Hague said.
The descent of 34 minutes took place without incident. The parachutes of the capsule deployed and the craft landed in Kazakhstan, where search and rescue teams quickly recovered the team. "The first moment I was able to take a deep breath was after we came to a skid stop in the capsule and my window was 12 inches from the ground," said Hague, "and I realized how lucky we were.
The Hague paid tribute to the thousands of engineers and controllers who have put in place the emergency systems. "I'm grateful that they did their job," he said. "It helped to alleviate the disappointment of not being present on the station. I would prefer to be there, but I'm very grateful to be alive and kicking today. "
Hague said he did not know if he was going to fly again or when. He is currently on leave in Houston before returning to NASA next week. The head of the Russian state space society, Dmitry Rogozin, tweeted On Saturday, he expects Hague and Ovchinin to head for space in the spring of 2019. The Russian authorities are also investigating a strange drill hole in a different Soyuz capsule, which is tied to the 39, ISS, although NASA's director, Jim Bridenstine, has stated that he expects the Soyuz mission to resume after the end of a joint US-US investigation. Russian. Three astronauts stay aboard the space station. NASA officials have not said they will return at the end of their planned mission in December.
Friday's incident was the first time in 35 years that the crewed Soyuz flight failed after take-off. Hague and Ovchinin had to perform an outing in space and 300 scientific experiments during their six months stay on the space station. Upon returning from Russia, Hague returned to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. He stated that he had been kissed by his fellow astronauts, but that he had also been caught off guard to try harder next time.
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