U.S., Russian astronauts land safely despite rocket failure

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — The problem came two minutes into the flight: The rocket carrying an American and a Russian to the International Space Station failed Thursday, triggering an emergency that sent their capsule into a steep, harrowing fall back to Earth.

The crew landed safely on the steppes of Kazakhstan, but the aborted mission dealt another blow to the troubled Russian space program that currently serves as the only way to deliver astronauts to the orbiting outpost. It also was the first such accident for Russia’s manned program in over three decades.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin had a brief period of weightlessness when the capsule separated from the malfunctioning Soyuz rocket at an altitude of about 31 miles, then endured gravitational forces of 6-7 times more than is felt on Earth as they came down at a sharper-than-normal angle.

About a half-hour later, the capsule parachuted onto a barren area about 12 miles east of the city of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan.

“Thank God the crew is alive,” said Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

All Russian manned launches were suspended pending an investigation into the failure, said Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov.

New NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who watched the launch at the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome with his Russian counterpart, said Hague and Ovchinin were in good condition. He added that a “thorough investigation” will be conducted.

Hague, 43, and Ovchinin, 47, lifted off at 4:40 a.m. EDT. The astronauts were to dock at the space station six hours later and join an American, a Russian and a German on board.

But the three-stage Soyuz rocket suffered an unspecified failure of its second stage two minutes after launch. Russian news reports indicated that one of its four first-stage engines might have failed to jettison in sync with others, resulting in the second stage’s shutdown and activating the automatic emergency rescue system.

For the crew in the capsule, events would have happened very quickly, NASA’s deputy chief astronaut Reid Wiseman told reporters at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. An emergency light would have come on and, an instant later, the abort motors would fire to pull the capsule away from the rocket.

Wiseman said the only thing that went through his mind was “I hope they get down safe.”

Search and rescue teams scrambled to recover the crew, and paratroopers were dropped to the site. Dzhezkazgan is about 280 miles northeast of Baikonur, and spacecraft returning from the space station normally land in that area.

Back at Baikonur, Bridenstine acknowledged in a NASA TV interview that “for a period of time, we didn’t know what the situation was.”

Hague’s wife and parents anxiously awaited word at Baikonur, accompanied the whole time by a NASA astronaut who was in the same class as Hague. They all behaved admirably, according to Bridenstine, adding that Hague’s wife, Catie, is an Air Force officer like her husband and also a public affairs officer.

“It was a tough day, no doubt, but at the end of the day, the training paid off for everybody,” he said.

Still, Bridenstine said: “We are thrilled that even though it was a launch failure, all of the safety systems worked.”

The astronauts were returned to Baikonur for medical checks and to see their families. They were spending the night there before heading to Star City, Russia’s training center outside Moscow.

It was to be the first space mission for Hague, who joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2013, and he might have to wait awhile for another shot. Ovchinin spent six months on the orbiting outpost in 2016.

Oleg Orlov, the head of Russia’s main space medicine center, said the crew was trained to endure higher-than-usual gravity loads and were tightly strapped into their custom-made seats to help withstand the pressure.

Flight controllers kept the three space station residents informed, assuring them, “The boys have landed.”

“Glad our friends are fine,” space station commander Alexander Gerst, a European Space Agency astronaut from Germany, tweeted from orbit. “Spaceflight is hard. And we must keep trying for the benefit of humankind.”

There was no immediate word on whether the space station crew might need to extend its own six-month mission. Two spacewalks planned for later this month were off indefinitely. Hague was supposed to be one of the spacewalkers.

NASA said it’s dusting off its plans for operating the space station without a crew, just in case the Russian investigation drags into next year.