MOSCOW – A two-man crew bound for the International Space Station wasforced to make an emergency landing when a Soyuz rocket failed shortlyafter blast-off on Thursday, in a major setback for Russia’s beleagueredspace industry.
US astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin were rescuedwithout injuries in Kazakhstan.
The manned spacecraft incident is the first of its kind in Russia’spost-Soviet history.
The Russian space industry has suffered a series of problems in recentyears, including the loss of a number of satellites and other spacecraft.
“The emergency rescue system worked, the vessel was able to land inKazakhstan… the crew are alive,” the Russian space agency Roscosmos saidin a tweet.
“An accident with the booster, two minutes, 45 seconds,” the voice ofOvchinin could be heard saying calmly in live-streamed footage of thelaunch from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur cosmodrome.
The incident came as the rocket was travelling about 4,700 miles (7,563kilometres), 119 seconds into the voyage, according to NASA.
“Shortly after launch, there was an anomaly with the booster and the launchascent was aborted, resulting in a ballistic landing of the spacecraft,”the American agency said in a statement.
Rescue workers reached the site of the emergency landing and evacuatedOvchinin and Hague. Roscosmos published pictures of the men on a sofa inthe Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan, having their blood pressure taken.
The descent was sharper than usual meaning the crew was subjected to agreater G-force, but they have been prepared for this scenario in training,according to a commentator on NASA’s video livestream of the launch.
“We’re tightening our seatbelts,” Ovchinin said on the video.
“That was a short flight.”
“Thank God the cosmonauts are alive,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’sspokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov told news agencies that Russia wouldsuspend manned flights.
Roscosmos’s online stream of the launch cut out shortly after lift-off.
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– Hole on the ISS –
There were two similar Soviet-era accidents involving the Soyuz spacecraft,which are still used to ferry crews to and from the ISS.
In 1975, Oleg Makarov and Vasily Lazarev made a successful emergencylanding in Siberia’s Altai mountains following problems during boosterseparation.
Vladimir Titov and Gennady Strekalov survived a fire during launch inKazakhstan in 1983.
Former military pilots Ovchinin and Hague had been set to join AlexanderGerst of the European Space Agency, NASA’s Serena Aunon-Chancellor andSergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos following a six-hour flight.
The International Space Station — a rare point of cooperation betweenMoscow and Washington — has been orbiting the Earth at roughly 28,000kilometres per hour since 1998 and will mark its 20th birthday in November.
But even the space station has proved a source of controversy in recentweeks.
Russian space officials have said they are investigating whether a holethat caused an oxygen leak on the ISS was drilled deliberately byastronauts.
The hole was detected in August and quickly sealed up, but Russiannewspapers said Roscosmos was probing the possibility that US crewmates hadsabotaged the space station to get a sick colleague sent back home.
Dmitry Rogozin, a firebrand nationalist politician who this year wasappointed by President Vladimir Putin to head Roscosmos, said on Twitter hehad ordered a state commission to probe the accident.
He was shown talking to the astronauts after they arrived in Zhezkazgan.
The politician has clashed with the US, suggesting American astronautsshould use trampolines instead of Russian rockets to reach the ISS afterWashington imposed sanctions over Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. -APP/AFP
