MOSCOW, October 13. /TASS/. The video recorder and telemetry data from the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle that malfunctioned on October 11 were delivered to the Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Saturday.
"Results of the examination will be handed over to the commission which was set up to investigate this incident," says the statement posted on the state corporation’s site.
Roscosmos "stays in touch with NASA over the delivery of an American cargo spaceship to the ISS if necessary," it says.
A Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with a manned Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft blasted off from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome to the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, at 11:40 a.m. Moscow time. On board the spacecraft were Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin (the commander of the Soyuz MS-10) and NASA astronaut Nick Hague.
Following a smooth liftoff, the Soyuz’s booster malfunctioned between the first and second stages of separating, whereupon the crew was forced to abort the flight and switch to ballistic descent. The manned Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft ended up landing in the Kazakh steppe.
The press office of Russia’s Central Military District reported that rescuers recovered the crew from the descent capsule. Later, the crewmembers were examined and found to be in good condition. After their medical check-up in the town of Baikonur, the astronauts were transported to Moscow.
This is the first emergency landing with this type of carrier rocket over the past 35 years.