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Crew of Soyuz rocket survive emergency landing after engine problem
MOSCOW, Oct 11, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The two-man crew of a Soyuz rocket made
a successful emergency landing Thursday after an engine problem on lift-off
to the International Space Station, in a major setback for the beleaguered
Russian space industry.
US astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin were
rescued without injuries in Kazakhstan.
“The emergency rescue system worked, the vessel was able to land in
Kazakhstan… the crew are alive,” the Russian space agency Roscosmos said in
a tweet.
The pair are in contact with ground control, the space agency said.
Over the past few years the Russian space industry has suffered a series
of problems including the loss of a number of satellites and other
spacecraft.
The rocket was launched was from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at
0840 GMT.
“The launch had a problem with the booster (rocket) a few seconds after
the first stage separation and we can confirm now that the crew has started
to go into ballistic descent mode,” the voiceover on a NASA livestream from
mission control in Houston said.
The NASA commentator later said the crew was in good condition and
communicating with rescue workers after landing east of the Kazakh city of
Zhezkazgan.
The descent was sharper than usual meaning the crew was subjected to a
greater G-force, but they have been prepared for this scenario in training,
the commentator said.
A source in the Russian space agency told AFP that rescue workers had
reached the crew.
– ‘Thank God’ –
The Kremlin confirmed the men had survived. Russian presidential spokesman
Dmitry Peskov told journalists: “Thank God the cosmonauts are alive”.
Roscosmos’s online stream of the launch cut out shortly after lift-off.
Former military pilots Ovchinin and Hague were set to join Alexander Gerst
of the European Space Agency, NASA’s Serena Aunon-Chancellor and Sergey
Prokopyev of Roscosmos following a six-hour flight.
The International Space Station — a rare point of cooperation between
Moscow and Washington — has been orbiting the Earth at roughly 28,000
kilometres per hour since 1998 and will mark its 20th birthday in November.
Hague was born in the same year the United States and the Soviet Union
launched their first joint space mission, the Apollo-Soyuz, or Soyuz-Apollo
mission in 1975.
Dmitry Rogozin, a firebrand nationalist politician who this year was
appointed by President Vladimir Putin to head Roscosmos, said on Twitter he
had ordered a state commission to probe the accident.
Rogozin was flying to the scene of the emergency landing, the space agency
said.
BSS/AFP/BZC/1630HRS