MOSCOW, October 12. /TASS/. Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague are feeling okay after Thursday's failed mission to the International Space Station, and are ready to take a flight to Moscow from Kazakhstan, a health official told TASS on Friday.
"We took precautions just in case, we decided not to transport them to Moscow immediately. They spend the night here, at Baikonur, had a dinner yesterday and a breakfast today. They are in good mood and health, so we will take them to Moscow shortly," the deputy head of Russia’s Federal Biomedical Agency, Vyacheslav Rogozhnikov, said.
"If not for yesterday’s accident, I would say they are totally healthy. Everything went fine for them, their capsule landed, the g-force they had to experience was moderate and did not last for long. We found them almost immediately," the official added.
He also said that Ovchinin and Hague had no contraindications for further space missions after the failed launch and subsequent ballistic descent.
"It’s too early to speak at the moment, but none of them has any contraindications. So, yes, they will definitely fly. At least, Alexei [Ovchinin]," the deputy head of Russia’s Federal Biomedical Agency, Vyacheslav Rogozhnikov, said.
A Soyuz-FG launch vehicle carrying the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at 11:40 Moscow time on Thursday. It was to take a crew of two - Roscosmos’s Alexei Ovchinin and NASA’s Nick Hague - to the International Space Station (ISS). The launch vehicle failed minutes after the liftoff, sending the descent capsule into ballistic reentry. A rocket and space industry source earlier told TASS that a strap-on booster separation error is seen as the most likely cause of the failed launch.
The capsule with the crew landed safely in Kazakhstan. After evacuation and medical examination the crew was brought to an airdrome near Baikonur. This is the first-ever emergency involving this type of rocket over 35 years.