MOSCOW, October 17. /TASS/. Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos plans to keep the crew of cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague and send them together into outer space as soon as possible, Roscosmos Executive Director for Manned Programs, Pilot-Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov said on Wednesday.
"In the program [of flights to the International Space Station], we are planning to use the Ovchinin-Hague crew as soon as possible. From the viewpoint of the program [of flights], it is expedient to keep together the Ovchinin-Hague crew," the Roscosmos official told a press conference at the Cosmonaut Training Center.
"We are planning to keep them together. Moreover, perhaps, someone else will join them. We are now considering this option. But we are planning to keep them together," Krikalyov said.
The Ovchinin-Hague crew has undergone good training and thanks to the Soyuz spacecraft’s reliable safety system, there are no medical pre-requisites for delaying the flight or re-staffing the crew, the Roscosmos official said.
Soyuz aborted launch
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.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague, who returned to Moscow from the Baikonur spaceport on October 12 after the Soyuz booster’s failure, flew to the United States on October 13, the Cosmonaut Training Center’s press service told TASS.