Current International Space Station Cmdr. Alexander Gerst expected to be welcoming two additional crewmembers to the orbiting laboratory Thursday (Oct. 11) — but instead, he found himself photographing their failed launch. NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin launched aboard a Soyuz rocket at about 4:47 a.m. EDT (0847 GMT) from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But just a couple of minutes after liftoff, a failure in the rocket's booster triggered a ballistic re-entry for the pair of would-be space travelers. Investigations into the Soyuz launch failure will be performed by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos. [In Photos: The Harrowing Soyuz Launch Abort in Pictures] European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst captured this incredible view of a failed crew launch to the International Space Station on Oct. 11, 2018. (Image credit: A. Gerst/ESA/NASA) The astronauts landed safely and were picked up by a search-and-rescue team that was deployed as part of standard launch procedure. Although the dramatic launch barely made it to space before the capsule tumbled back to Earth, it was certainly visible from space. Gerst was able to spot the rocket's climb from on board its hoped-for destination, capturing a majestic streak of white piercing Earth's atmosphere. European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst photographed the space station's view of a failed crew launch on Oct. 11, 2018. (Image credit: A. Gerst/ESA/NASA) "Glad our friends are fine," Gerst wrote in a statement accompanying the image. "Thanks to the rescue force of over 1,000 search-and-rescue professionals! Today showed again what an amazing vehicle the Soyuz is to be able to save the crew from such a failure. Spaceflight is hard. And we must keep trying for the benefit of humankind." An image of the failed Oct. 11, 2018, launch from the ground near Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (Image credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA) Gerst and his colleagues on the space station were alerted to the launch failure and the safe landing of Hague and Ovchinin in a call from mission control management on the ground. Their schedule was adjusted because they didn't need to help new crewmembers acclimate to the station. The three astronauts currently in orbit are due to return to Earth and be replaced by a new trio of astronauts in December. However, it's not yet clear how schedules will be adjusted to reflect Thursday's failed launch to ensure continuous staffing of the orbiting laboratory. Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook. Original article on Space.com.<doc-sep>And with the news the crew - Alexey Ovchinin, a Russian cosmonaut, and Nick Hague an American astronaut - are in good health according to officials, attention has somewhat inevitably turned to the more humorous side of the misfire.<doc-sep>NASA and the Roscosmos, the Russian state enterprise that handles spaceflight for that country, now has a big problem on their hands. A Soyuz spacecraft headed for the International Space Station experienced a launch failure early Thursday. The good news is that the two passengers, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin have landed safe and have been picked up by a search and rescue helicopter. The bad news is that there is now no reliable means of taking crew to and from the ISS. ADVERTISEMENT NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine explained that "shortly after launch, there was an anomaly with the booster and the launch ascent was aborted, resulting in a ballistic landing of the spacecraft." According to NASA, Hague and Ovchinin have been rescued and are in good condition. They are headed to Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia outside of Moscow. NASA is monitoring the situation and "working closely with Roscosmos to ensure the safe return of the crew. Safety of the crew is the utmost priority for NASA. A thorough investigation into the cause of the incident will be conducted,” according to a statement. The Russian government has already formed a state commission to investigate the cause of the accident. However, it seems clear that in combination with the hole found in the Soyuz now docked with the ISS, Roscosmos has developed a quality control problem that has become systemic. In the meantime, NASA’s commercial crew program continues to experience delays, according to Space News. Currently, the first uncrewed spaceflight for the SpaceX Dragon is scheduled for January 2019 while the first crewed test flight has been pushed back to June 2019. The first uncrewed flight for the Boeing CST-100 Starliner is not scheduled to happen until March 2019 and the first crewed test flight will occur on August 2019. NASA still hoped to have an operational test flight of the Dragon on August 2019 and for the CST-100 in December 2019. As a practical matter, NASA’s safety culture will likely prevent it from accelerating the commercial crew timetable. However, the June and August test flights might double as operational missions, taking new crews to the ISS and retrieving the current crews. In the meantime, NASA and Roscosmos has a number of options. They could try to maintain the current crew on the ISS until the commercial crew spacecraft are available or the Soyuz is certified safe to fly. Cargo resupply can keep the people on board the space station supplied with consumables. On the other hand, NASA and Roscosmos may explore the option of running the ISS without a crew until the commercial crew vehicles are ready or the Soyuz is pronounced safe to fly again, whichever comes first. Such a mode of operation has never been done before and entails some risk. The current state of affairs in which the world is dependent on using just one spacecraft has its origins in the Bush-era decision to retire the space shuttle fleet. The idea was that the cost of operating the orbiters would then be plowed into the then Constellation program that, among other things, would develop the Orion spacecraft as a new ISS taxi. At the time, NASA only anticipated a two-year ”space gap” during which the Soyuz would be relied on to access the $100 billion space station. However, delays in the development of the Orion and the program to develop commercial alternatives for space access provided an excuse for the Obama administration to cancel the Constellation program root and branch and double down on the commercial crew program. Angered by the decision, Congress initially underfunded the program to develop commercial spacecraft. The underfunding plus the usual technical problems that attend aerospace development projects expanded the two-year space gap to one lasting at least eight years. Thus, human spaceflight is facing yet another crisis made by ill-considered policy decisions by governments. Mark Whittington is the author of space exploration studies “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond.”<doc-sep>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.” Slideshow ( 18 images ) Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the most important thing was that the two men were alive. 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. Slideshow ( 18 images ) “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. “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.<doc-sep>
A Russian spacecraft traveling to the International Space Station Thursday had to make an emergency landing when a rocket engine failed to fire. It was the latest in a recent series of failures for the Russian space program, which is also used by the U.S. to carry its astronauts to the station. United States astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin landed safely about 20 kilometers from Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. The city is about 450 kilometers from the Russia’s Baikonur space center, which Russia operates through an agreement with the Republic of Kazakhstan. Both the U.S. space agency NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos reported that the two were quickly recovered from the landing area by rescue crews. A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “Thank God the crew is alive” after they had landed safely. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who watched the launch at Baikonur tweeted that Hague and Ovchinin are in good condition. He added that a “thorough investigation into the cause of the incident will be conducted.” What happened? About two minutes after launching, the three-stage Soyuz booster rocket suffered an unspecified failure of its second stage. Russia’s TASS news agency said the capsule carrying the two men separated from the troubled rocket safely. This caused the capsule to drop very sharply into the Earth’s atmosphere. Parachutes helped slow the returning capsule. Search and rescue teams were sent to recover the crew. Russia’s RIA news agency reported that Russia has immediately suspended all manned space launches after the failure. Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin said he had ordered a state commission to carry out an investigation into what went wrong. He said Russia will share all relevant information with the U.S. The Russian space program has suffered several failures in recent years. In August, the crew found a hole in a Russian Soyuz capsule docked to the orbiting space station. The hole caused a brief loss of air pressure before being fixed. The Russian space agency also sent 70 rocket engines back to production lines in 2016 to replace broken parts. However, Thursday’s incident was the first manned launch failure since 1983 when a Soyuz rocket exploded in the launch area. The cosmonauts safely escaped in that accident as well. International Space Station not threatened The two astronauts were to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) six hours after the launch to join an American, a Russian and a German currently aboard the station. The TASS news agency said that the ISS crew has enough supplies and that the failed launch will not affect operations. Relations between the U.S. and Russia have been very tense in recent years. Russian activities in Ukraine, charges of interfering in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 and the conflict in Syria are some of the main issues. However, the two sides have continued their cooperation in space. The U.S. and other nations have depended on Russia to carry astronauts to the ISS since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. In coming years, American aerospace companies SpaceX, with its Dragon 2, and Boeing, with its Starliner, are expected to return to space. I’m Mario Ritter. Mario Ritter adapted this story for VOA Learning English from AP and Reuters stories. Hai Do was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.​ _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story capsule –n. a small part of a spacecraft that is separate from the rest of the ship where people live and work stages –n. a section of a rocket that has fuel and an engine booster –n. part of a rocket that provides force for the launch and the first part of flight relevant –adj. relating to a subject in an appropriate way