BAIKONUR /Kazakhstan/, March 22. /TASS/. The crew of the Soyuz MS-25 manned spacecraft is safe after the cancelled launch of the Soyuz-2.1a rocket, Roscosmos Executive Director on manned programs Sergey Krikalyov told reporters.

"The crew is safe, you saw it - a bus has already fetched the crew; the crew has left the rocket and now proceeds to spacesuit removal. […] The crew returns to the quarantine, the launch preparations will continue," he told reporters.

Earlier on Thursday, an automatic interruption of the launch of a Soyuz-2.1a rocket occurred at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The rocket was supposed to take the 21st mission to the International Space Station.

In the history of modern Russia, manned launches have never been cancelled when a crew was already inside a spacecraft. In the USSR, this happened only once, in 1969, with the Soyuz-4 launch, which was manned by cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov.