What we feel on board a failed rocket launch

Everything was going well – until NASA astronaut Nick Hague suddenly shivered. "The first thing I really noticed was being shaken pretty violently from one side to the other," he said in his first public interviews. since the failure of its Soyuz rocket shortly after takeoff on October 11th.

The rocket was to transport Alexey Ovchinin, the cosmonaut of The Hague and Russia, to the International Space Station, which would have been the first US space voyage into space. Instead, the pair's emergency rescue system went into action after a problem during the recall separation.

This is the shimmy that the crew experienced during the booster separation – broadcast by NASA and curated here. So happy that they are safe !!
More information on the launch failure: https://t.co/Ws3Qu97BWK pic.twitter.com/JH2N3ROMqA

– Steve Spaleta (@stevespaleta) October 11, 2018

Their capsule separating from the disturbed servomotor was at the origin of this earthquake, which was accompanied by an emergency warning light and an alarm. Together, these signs indicated to the two astronauts that the description of their work for the day had just been rewritten – instead of reaching the space station, it was simply a matter of returning to Earth safely. . [In Photos: Space Station Crew’s Harrowing Abort Landing After Soyuz Launch Failure]

Hague and Ovchinin turned to their emergency manuals and went to work to head for the sudden landing. But while The Hague had simulated all kinds of mid-flight events, he had never flown in space before, which meant he did not always know if an experiment was typical of space or single flight. of its kind. "Everything was new to me, it was my first time," Hague said, thanking Ovchinin for sharing his previous experience during the landing. "He could tell me what was normal, which was not normal."

Hague compared his flight path to a bullet in the air, the safety mechanism allowing the astronauts to separate from the rocket until the climax of this trajectory. "I had a few seconds of zero gravity and I could see some floating objects in the capsule," he said.

He also took the opportunity to look out the window, not only to admire the Earth and the space, but also to check the position of the spacecraft. "My eyes were looking out the window to find out exactly where we were going to be," Hague said. "Were we going to land in the water, would we be in the steppes of Kazakhstan, had we made enough progress to find ourselves on more rugged, more mountainous terrain?"

Then it was time to go down and that's where things got worse for a while. "We are watching a whole series of events as we go down," said Hague. This includes monitoring the orientation of the capsule and how the systems respond to different inputs.

It also meant preparing physically for reintegration, ensuring that they were able to breathe normally while undergoing such seriousness. "We had to be ready to support the 7 g we were going to experience," said Hague. That's more than a standard landing (about 5g) but less than the 8 or less that astronauts are exposed to during training before flying.

There were also other preparations to make. "We had to be ready for the shock of opening the [para]Falls and make sure all our equipment is in place, then we have to work with the rescue teams, "said Hague, adding that as soon as the parachutes were open, it was like any other Soyuz landing. [Here’s What the Failed Soyuz Rocket Launch Looked Like to an Astronaut in Space]

"Thirty-four minutes may seem very long, but I can tell you that it seemed like a quick enough moment from the moment the urgency arrived at the moment I landed in the capsule while watching through the window, "said Hague.

And just like that, they had done it, surviving the first crew launch failure of a Soyuz rocket since 1983. "The first moment I was able to take a deep breath in any this test took place after a slip in our capsule, "said The Hague. "My window was about 12 inches [30 centimeters] from the earth that was outside and I was able to look through it and just breathe and take a moment and realize how lucky we were. "

Quickly, he changed his mind and again shone the spotlight on the people who made his landing safe. "Maybe lucky is not the right word," Hague said. "I think that lucky is the right word, because as I have already mentioned, there are only thousands of people who work tirelessly to put in place the systems in place, these systems that we saved last Thursday. "

Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her. @meghanbartels. follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook. Original article on Space.com.