Smoke rise as the boosters of first stage of the Soyuz-FG rocket with Soyuz MS-10 space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, ISS, separate after the launch at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018. The Russian rocket carries U.S. astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. The two astronauts are making an emergency landing after a Russian booster rocket carrying them into orbit to the International Space Station has failed after launch. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky) (AP) </s> MOSCOW - Russian spacecraft Soyuz MS-09 has successfully landed in Kazakhstan, bringing back the three astronauts who have completed their missions on the International Space Station (ISS), the Russian mission control centre said Thursday.

"The landing section with Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Prokopyev, NASA astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor and astronaut of the European Space Agency Alexander Gerst has landed," it was quoted by local media as saying.

On June 6, Russia successfully launched its Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft to the ISS. The three-member crew had lived on it for the scheduled 187 days.

Their successors, Oleg Kononenko of Russia, Anne McClain of the United States and David Saint-Jacques of Canada arrived in early December and are expected to stay on the ISS for six and a half months.

They were transported by the Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft, which was launched on Dec. 3. The flight was carried out after a spacecraft lift-off failure in October.

On Oct. 11 the capsule of the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft with Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin and U.S. astronaut Nick Hague on board made an emergency landing in Kazakhstan after the carrier rocket malfunctioned shortly after lift-off.

Russia then suspended manned space missions but sent a cargo ship to the ISS on Nov. 16. The Progress MS-10 cargo ship carried about 2.5 tons of various supplies, including fuel, air, water, scientific equipment, and life-support equipment for the ISS crew.

Russian state space corporation Roscosmos and investigators need for probe into the microfracture found on the orbital module of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft in late August, said the Russian mission control center.

On Dec. 12, a spacewalk was conducted by Russian cosmonauts to check the crack that led to a pressure leak at ISS. Russia's Soyuz models are currently the only spacecraft for spaceflights between the ISS and the Earth. </s> A Russian cosmonaut and an American astronaut are in "good condition" after a booster rocket on their spacecraft failed and forced them to make an emergency landing Thursday.

The Soyuz MS-10 rocket took off at 4:40 a.m. local time on what was supposed to be a six-hour journey to the International Space Station. Instead, the rocket suffered a malfunction shortly after taking off from Russia's spaceport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

The spacecraft's two-man crew, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin, made an emergency landing in the craft's capsule in Kazakhstan. Rescue teams reached the landing site and confirmed that both men are alive and in "good condition," NASA wrote on .

"[Nick Hague] and Alexey Ovchinin are on helicopters, making their way back to Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Search & rescue teams report that they remain in good condition after a safe landing following an issue with their launch on a Soyuz earlier," NASA tweeted.

Russian state news agencies reported that the two men would be flown to the town of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan to undergo medical examinations.

The head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, said that it was creating a state commission to investigate the cause of the crash, and deputy prime minister Yuri Borisov announced that Russia would be suspending manned flights until the incident could be reviewed.

The moment the boost rocket failed was captured on the live-feed of the launch carried on NASA and Roscomos’ websites. In the video, a burst of light was seen around the rocket, which was still visible in the distance.

NASA has paid for places on Russia’s Soyuz rockets for its astronauts to travel to the International Space Station since the American shuttle retired seven years ago.

Recently, the U.S. has been seeking to replace the route with contracts with commercial space companies, such as SpaceX, but the Soyuz currently remains the only way to reach the station.

SpaceX and Boeing are both scheduled to have unmanned test flights with their own spacecraft in January and NASA astronauts are training for flights aboard the two companies' crafts in June and August. </s> BAIKONUR COSMODROME, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - A Russian cosmonaut and a U.S. astronaut were safe on Thursday after a Soyuz rocket bound for the International Space Station failed in mid-air two minutes after liftoff in Kazakhstan, leading to a dramatic emergency landing.

The two-man crew, Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin and American Nick Hague, landed unharmed on the Kazakh desert steppe as rescue crews raced to reach them, according to the U.S. space agency NASA and Russia’s space agency Roscosmos.

The mishap occurred as the first and second stages of a Russian booster rocket separated shortly after the launch from Kazakhstan’s Soviet-era cosmodrome of Baikonur.

The Soyuz capsule carrying Ovchinin and Hague separated from the malfunctioning Russian rocket and plunged 31 miles (50 km) down to the surface, with parachutes helping to slow its speed, NASA said. A cloud of sand billowed up as the capsule landed after what NASA called a 34-minute steep ballistic descent.

Video from inside the capsule showed the two men being shaken around at the moment the failure occurred, with their arms and legs flailing. Ovchinin can be heard saying, “That was a quick flight.”

Photographs released by Roscosmos after the rescue showed the two men smiling and relaxing on sofas at a town near their landing site as they underwent medical tests. A photograph posted on Twitter by NASA showed Ovchinin and Hague embracing their families after being transported back to the Baikonur site.

Rescue crews raced to the scene to retrieve them from their landing spot, including paratroopers, helicopters and all-terrain vehicles, NASA said.

NASA has relied on Russian rockets to ferry astronauts to the space station since the United States retired its Space Shuttle program in 2011, although the agency has announced plans for a test flight carrying two astronauts on a SpaceX commercial rocket next April.

Space is an area of cooperation between the United States and Russia at a time of fraught relations. Asked about the mishap, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House he was “not worried” that American astronauts have to rely on Russia to get into space.

Thursday’s mishap was the first serious launch problem experienced by a manned Soyuz space mission since 1983, when a crew narrowly escaped before a launchpad explosion.

‘CREW HAS BEEN SAVED’

Moscow immediately suspended all manned space launches, the RIA news agency reported, while Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said he ordered a state commission to be created to investigate what went wrong. Russia’s Investigative Committee said it opened a criminal investigation into the matter.

“Rescue services have been working since the first second of the accident,” Rogozin wrote on Twitter. “The emergency rescue systems of the MS-Soyuz spacecraft worked smoothly. The crew has been saved.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the most important thing was that the two men were alive.

A view shows the Soyuz capsule transporting U.S. astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin, after it made an emergency landing following a failure of its booster rockets, near the city of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan October 11, 2018. Federal Air Transport Agency "Rosaviation"/Handout via REUTERS.

The space station’s next re-supply mission had been scheduled for late October from Baikonur, but the new investigation may delay it.

NASA officials now must decide how or whether to maintain a U.S. presence on the $100 billion orbital research laboratory.

“The fact that this crew didn’t get to orbit, we feel bad for them. But we have confidence that our Russian colleagues will figure out what’s going on and we’ll hopefully see Nick and Alexei in orbit at the space station soon,” said Kenny Todd, NASA’s International Space Station operations integration manager.

Hague and Ovchinin were set to join the station’s current three-member crew, which includes American Serena Aunon-Chancellor.

“We have a lot of things planned through the rest of the fall and the winter, and that’s all just being reassessed right now,” Sam Scimemi, NASA’s director for the International Space Station, told Reuters. “We have resources well into next year for this crew, so there’s no concern about resources on board.”

Interfax quoted a source as saying the crash meant the three people aboard the space station - a German and a Russian in addition to the American - would be stuck there at least until January. They were due to return to Earth in December.

Unmanned launches of Soyuz rockets might also be suspended, Interfax said.

Visiting Kazakhstan for the first time as NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine witnessed Thursday’s launch and promised a “thorough investigation” into the mishap.

Slideshow (17 Images)

“I’m grateful that everyone is safe,” Bridenstine said in a statement.

Questions are now likely to be asked about Russia’s space program. In August, a hole appeared in a Soyuz capsule docked to the ISS that caused a brief loss of air pressure and had to be patched. Rogozin has said it could have been made deliberately by someone during manufacturing or while the craft was in space.

Last November, Roscosmos lost contact with a newly launched weather satellite after it blasted off from Russia’s new Vostochny cosmodrome in the Far East. </s> Russian spacecraft Soyuz MS-09 with three crew members onboard landed successfully in Kazakhstan Thursday, the European Space Agency said.

Russian astronaut Sergey Prokopyev, United States' Serena Aunon-Chancellor of the NASA, and German Alexander Gerst of the ESA, returned from the International Space Station in the spacecraft after staying in space for 197 days. </s> BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AP) — Three astronauts who were launched into space aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft Monday entered the International Space Station nearly eight hours later, a relief to relatives and scientists months after a rocket failure aborted another mission.

The hatch of the capsule carrying NASA astronaut Anne McClain, David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency and Oleg Kononenko of Russian space agency Roscosmos was opened while the station was flying over the southern coast of Yemen.

The three were greeted upon arrival Monday by the station's current crew members, who had waited outside the hatch after the astronauts' capsule docked and underwent safety checks.

Their Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft launched from the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday at 5:31 p.m. (1131 GMT; 6:31 a.m. EST) then entered a designated orbit just under nine minutes later. The spacecraft made four orbits over six hours as it chased down the space station for the docking.

The astronauts were the first sent to be sent to the space station since a crewed Soyuz launch was aborted in October after a booster rocket failed to separate properly, crippling the rocket. The families of the crew, other astronauts and space officials from several nations breathed a sigh of relief after observing the flawless launch.

NASA and Roscosmos said all onboard systems operated normally and the astronauts felt fine during the six-hour trip the space station. After two hours waiting in their capsule to confirm their ship was firmly docked to the station, they exited the capsule to join three astronauts already aboard the orbiting outpost at 1:37 a.m. (1940 GMT; 2:40 p.m. EST.)

The station's current crew of NASA's Serena Aunon-Chancellor, Russian Sergei Prokopyev and German Alexander Gerst were waiting to greet the newcomers. They are scheduled to return to Earth on Dec. 20.

McClain, Saint-Jacques and Kononenko will spend more than six months at the space station doing research and experiments in biology, Earth science, physical sciences and technology.

A Soyuz-FG rocket carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos' Alexei Ovchinin failed two minutes into its flight on Oct. 11, activating an automatic rescue system that sent their capsule into a steep ride back to Earth. They managed to emerge safely despite the harrowing ordeal.

A Russian investigation attributed the failure to a sensor that was damaged during the rocket's final assembly.

NASA announced Monday that Hague and Ovchinin will now launch to the space station on Feb. 28, along with NASA astronaut Christina Hammock Koch.

The Soyuz accident in October was the first aborted crew launch for the Russian space program since 1983, when two Soviet cosmonauts safely jettisoned after a launch pad explosion.

Russian space officials took measures to prevent the repeat of such a rocket failure. Since the October mishap, four successful unmanned Soyuz satellite launches have been conducted to clear the path for the crew's launch on Monday.

After Monday's successful launch, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted his thanks to his Russian counterpart Dmitry Rogozin and to NASA and Roscosmos space teams "for their dedication to making this launch a success."

The Soyuz spacecraft is currently the only vehicle that can ferry crews to the space station, but Russia stands to lose that monopoly in the coming years with the arrival of SpaceX's Dragon and Boeing's Starliner crew capsules.

Vladimir Isachenkov and Matthew Bodner in Moscow contributed to this report. </s> If you would like to see more articles like this please support our coverage of the space program by becoming a Spaceflight Now Member . If everyone who enjoys our website helps fund it, we can expand and improve our coverage further.

A Soyuz rocket poised to send two new crew members to the International Space Station rolled to its launch pad Tuesday at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz-FG rocket emerged from an assembly building at the Central Asia spaceport at sunrise Tuesday. Lying on its side, the three-stage launcher rode a specially-designed rail bar to Launch Pad. No. 1 at Baikonur, a historic launch site used in 1961 on the flight of Yuri Gagarin, who became the first person to travel in space.

Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin will occupy the center seat when the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft lifts off at 0840 GMT (4:40 a.m. EDT) Thursday from Baikonur. He will be joined by NASA astronaut Nick Hague in the left seat of the Soyuz spacecraft.

After a nearly nine-minute climb into orbit, the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft will commence its chase of the International Space Station, with docking planned at 1444 GMT (10:44 a.m. EDT). The arrival of Ovchinin and Hague will raise the station’s crew complement to five.

The duo plans to stay on the space station until mid-April.

See our Mission Status Center for details and live coverage of the launch. </s> "It is impossible to draw any conclusions now. He [Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov] said that the relevant authorities would now work to figure out what had happened," Peskov told reporters.

According to Sergey Krikalev, the executive director of manned space programs at the Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos, the special commission investigating the cause of the Soyuz booster failure is expected to present its first findings in late October.

READ MORE: Soyuz MS-10 Crew Arrives at Chkalovsky Airport After Failed Launch (VIDEO)

Soyuz MS-14 May Be Reequipped for Manned Flight

Meanwhile, a space industry source told Sputnik that the Soyuz MS-14 unmanned spacecraft, which is expected to be launched in 2019, maybe re-equipped for manned flight following the Soyuz booster failure.

"Most likely, the Soyuz MS-14, which is scheduled to be launched in September 2019, will be re-equipped as an ordinary manned spacecraft," the source said.

The comment was made after on Thursday, an accident occurred during the liftoff of a Soyuz-FG launch vehicle carrying the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft with two new members of the ISS crew on board — Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague. The crew has safely returned to Earth in a jettisoned escape capsule.

UAE, US May Demand Compensation From Russia for Late Delivery of Astronauts

"The flight of an Arab astronaut will definitely move forward for about half a year. Other terms are written in the contract, which means we will incur some losses. It is not ruled out that they may demand compensation from us for not meeting the deadlines. Plus we did not deliver the American astronaut, and they paid for his flight. We lost the spacecraft and the rocket without fulfilling our commitment to NASA, so we will have to give them a new slot," he noted.

The source also said the flight of two Russian newbie cosmonauts to the ISS, previously slated for next fall, was expected to be delayed until 2020.

"An expedition with cosmonauts Tikhonov and Babkin, who have not flown yet, was planned for next fall. They will not fly at that time now because the UAE astronaut and, possibly, the American astronaut will most likely fly, while an experienced Russian cosmonaut will take the third slot," he said.

READ MORE: Soyuz MS-10 Launch to ISS from Baikonur Cosmodrome (VIDEO)

Earlier in the day, Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin stated that the flight of Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague to the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled for the next spring. </s> RUSSIA — Astronauts on board a Soyuz rocket heading to the International Space Station survived an emergency landing following a booster failure, a Russian space official said Thursday.

“The crew landed,” Dmitry Rogozin, director of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said on Twitter. “All are alive.”

The rocket was transporting NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos for a six-month stay on the ISS.

NASA said its support teams had reached the location where the crew touched down.

“The search and rescue teams have reached the Soyuz spacecraft landing site and report that the two crew members are in good condition and are out of the capsule,” NASA tweeted.

The pair will be taken to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, outside the Russian capital, Moscow, NASA said.

Dramatic footage showed the capsule carrying the crew as it parachuted back to Earth before thumping down in a plume of dust in Kazakhstan, about 250 miles away from where it took off.

The rocket had launched minutes earlier, at 4:40 a.m. ET, from the country’s Baikonur Cosmodrome on a journey that was expected to involve four orbits of the Earth and take six hours.

The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft was able to separate from the Soyuz-FG rocket booster after the issue emerged, NASA said, and began a ballistic descent.

A ballistic descent is a sharper angle of landing compared to normal, the space agency said. This means the spacecraft would have been traveling faster than usual as it approached Earth.

“I’m grateful that everyone is safe,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. “A thorough investigation into the cause of the incident will be conducted.”

Rogozin said Roscosmos was forming a state investigative commission to find out what went wrong. “Telemetry is being studied,” he said on Twitter. “Rescue services worked from the first second of the accident.”

The emergency rescue system on board the Soyuz “worked normally,” Rogozin added.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he expected Russian President Vladimir Putin would be briefed on the incident.

Hague, who only joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2013, was on his first space mission.

He and Ovchinin were due to join Expedition 57 Commander Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, NASA Flight Engineer Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Roscosmos Flight Engineer Sergey Prokopyev on the ISS. They arrived at the station in June.

The Expedition 57 crew members are working on hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science, according to NASA.
Soyuz MS-10, carrying a cosmonaut and an astronaut to the International Space Station, is forced to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan after a failure with its Soyuz-FG rocket.