MOSCOW, October 8. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree on awarding the Order of Courage to NASA astronaut Nick Hague and other state decorations to staff members of Russian companies in the rocket and space sector.
The decree published on the official legal information portal says that US citizen Hague is to be awarded "for courage and high professionalism shown while performing his duties in the conditions of an increased risk to life when an emergency situation occurred at the Baikonur cosmodrome."
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 October 11, 2018. 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 crew was not hurt. This was the first emergency situation with the launch of a manned spacecraft over the past 35 years.
Under the decree, "the Order for Merit to the Fatherland" of the first and second degrees will be also awarded to some employees of the Roscosmos state space corporation, the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, Lavochkin Research and Production Association, the Vostochny space center and the Progress rocket and space center. Another 12 people will receive medals "For Merit in Space Exploration."