Today at 11:40 (hereinafter specified Moscow time) from the Baikonur cosmodrome launched spacecraft “Soyuz-MS-10” with the carrier rocket “Soyuz-FG”. The ship was heading to the International space station, and the team consisted of 2 people — Russian Alexey Ovchinin and American nick Hague. According to available information, the separation of the third stage and bringing the ship into orbit was supposed to happen at 11:49, after 6 hours at 17:49 was scheduled docking with the ISS. But almost immediately after the start something went wrong.
The launch of “Soyuz MS-10” from Baikonur was observed by the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin and the head of NASA Jim Breidenstein. In the second minute after the engine has started emergency shutdown of engines of the second stage. As said an anonymous source at Baikonur to the edition “Interfax”,
“The accident occurred at 119 seconds in the separation of the side blocks of the first stage from the Central block of the second stage. Then triggered a distress beacon, the ship was divided into compartments and released the parachute. The crew is alive and emergency landing in Kazakhstan.”
Further events developed no less rapidly. For the descending device were observed from the Ground and were able to calculate the anticipated landing site. Fortunately, communication with the astronauts survived in the accident no one was hurt. But still had to safely land the escape pod. “Roskosmos” and NASA organized a video broadcast of the launch. On the first accident in the picture not included, but our American colleagues are captured as the moment of the missile launch and the event itself. At the time of writing the news stream NASA continues.
But back to the escape pod. It landed somewhere in the 20-25 km from the city of Zhezkazgan, which is nearly 500 kilometers from Karaganda. On the still working channel when the astronauts reported that they are alive and waiting for the arrival of rescue teams, which are already heading to the landing site. After a couple of tens of minutes, the rescuers reached the landing capsule. At the moment we know that the lives of the astronauts are in no danger.
It is also worth mentioning that Alexei Ovchinin it was supposed to be the second flight. The first was held on 19 March 2016 amounted to 172 days 03 hours and 47 minutes 15 seconds. But his colleague Nick Hague, was supposed to go to ISS for the first time.
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The rocket “Soyuz” after the start emergency shut down engines
Vladimir Kuznetsov