US and Russian astronauts survive the failure of the Soyuz rocket directed to the space station

MOSCOW – A Russian Soyuz rocket malfunctioned two minutes after takeoff Thursday on a mission to the International Space Station, triggering an automatic abandonment order forcing both crew members – an American and a Russian – to perform a heart-rending parachute landing in their capsule 200 miles from the launch site in the steppes of Kazakhstan.

American astronaut Tyler "Nick" Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin had managed to make their way halfway through space before changing direction. According to NASA, they fell about 50 km off the ground. They were quickly spotted by rescue teams and returned to the launch site for a moving meeting with their families.

The failure of the Soyuz MS-10 rocket effectively puts an end to all US and Russian access to space while waiting for an investigation to be conducted on what's wrong. For the past seven years since NASA's withdrawal of the space shuttle, the United States has been relying on Russian equipment to transport Americans to and from the space station.

Thursday's dramatic events have increased pressure on Boeing and SpaceX, the two companies expected to have a commercial spacecraft ready for launch this year, but have experienced delays and should not be ready until mid-next year. .

Three crew members currently on the space station are not in danger, NASA said. They have enough supplies for an extended mission beyond their scheduled return on Dec. 13 and can return home aboard a Soyuz spacecraft currently connected to the space station. But there are limits to how long the Soyuz module can remain in orbit before its fuel is no longer reliable.

Another crew of three is scheduled for the launch of the station in December, but this mission is threatened by the rocket's failure on Thursday. NASA officials said it was possible for astronauts in space to be forced to return to unmanned Earth to replace them.

US astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, a member of the International Space Station (ISS) lead shipping team, walk before the launch of the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft in the Baikonur cosmodrome rented by Russia, Kazakhstan, Thursday, October 11, 2018. (Photo AP / Dmitri Lovetsky, Pool)

NASA is in no hurry to abandon, even temporarily, the $ 100 billion orbital laboratory, which requires constant maintenance and has never been operated by ground controls.

Big decisions await us, but on Thursday, US and Russian officials expressed their relief after the imminent crash. It was a terrifying day – but not tragic because the evacuation system worked.

"It was not quite the day we had planned, but it's good to find Nick and Alexey at least on the ground," said Kenny Todd, NASA space station operations manager. "It's a very difficult business we're engaged in. And that can make you humble."

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The launch looked good until a red light was lit inside the capsule.

"Failure of the recall," said a translator at the control of the mission near Moscow, according to a transcript of Russian television.

Computers took over. The capsule is automatically separated from the rocket. The crew felt a shock and quickly declared that it was weightless: they were in free fall on Earth.

The crew then began a "ballistic" trajectory that subjected Hague and Ovchinin to more than six times gravity and twisted the capsule.

"We are preparing for the G charges," Ovchinin reported to the mission control. "The charge G is 6.7".

They briefly left the track during the 34-minute descent. NASA's deputy chief astronaut Reid Wiseman said his heart was beating wildly as he wondered where the capsule would fall. At that time, only the gravity control was under control and the helicopter rescue teams rushed to where they thought the capsule would land.

The parachutes are automatically deployed. The gray capsule fell to the side on flat, grassy ground.

The Hague and Ovchinin have been examined by medical authorities and found to be in good health.

"Glad our friends are fine," tweeted Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, the station's commander. "Space flight is difficult. And we continue to try for the benefit of mankind. "

US astronaut Nick Hague kisses his wife, Catie, after landing at Krayniy Airport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. (Document courtesy of Bill Ingalls / NASA)

Russian officials said the crewed space launches had been suspended pending a malfunction investigation. The Russian news agency Interfax also said that all unprepared launches could be stopped for the rest of the year, citing sources of space programs.

The failure of Thursday's launch occurred at a difficult time in the US-Russian space partnership. The two nations were friendly 250 miles above the Earth's surface, even when events on the ground, such as the annexation of Crimea by Russia or Russian interference in the 2016 elections , have fueled tensions.

But the United States and Russia opposed the cause of a small hole discovered in August on the Soyuz – Soyuz MS-09 module – currently docked at the space station. Moscow says the hole, which has been repaired, is the result of deliberate drilling and suggested sabotage, while the US space agency announced this week that investigators would determine the cause.

In this context, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine traveled to Kazakhstan to attend the launch on Thursday and meet his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Rogozin from Roscosmos. The summit took a much more dramatic turn than any of them had imagined.

Rogozin said that he was forming a state commission to investigate the causes of this failure. This was the first time the Soyuz had failed at the launch of the 20-year-old International Space Station. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov, who oversees space flights, promised to share all the information from the investigation with the United States.

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This failure puts enormous pressure on NASA and the two companies – SpaceX and Boeing – to send their astronauts to the space station. Both companies suffered repeated delays. NASA recently announced that neither of them would do a test flight not yet armed this year and that the first flights with astronauts on board would not happen before the middle of the year. 2019.

"We like to have more of an operational system and at the moment we have zero," said Lori Garver, former assistant director of NASA who was a strong advocate for commercial teams under the Obama administration.

"You can go back on the decisions that were made – for example, the removal of the shuttle, for example, the fact that the Congress did not provide funding during the first few years of commercial crew, which delayed the availability SpaceX and Boeing. In retrospect, these decisions do not look like good decisions, "said John Logsdon, a space policy expert and professor emeritus at George Washington University.

In June, the spacecraft that Boeing was planning to use to transport NASA astronauts to the International Space Station suffered a major setback when authorities uncovered a propellant leak during WW2. a test.

SpaceX also suffered setbacks, but says it is ready to conduct its first test mission to the station – without astronauts – in January. Nevertheless, Phil McAlister, who oversees NASA's commercial crew program, recently warned that "launch dates will remain uncertain and we expect that they will change as we approach their launch."

The last time the Moscow space program failed in a crew launch was in the Soviet era in 1983 when a Soyuz booster exploded. Cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Gennady Strekalov threw and landed safely near the launch pad.

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Achenbach reported from Washington. Christian Davenport of the Washington Post in Los Angeles and Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.