American astronaut, Russian cosmonaut safe after emergency landing

For about two minutes Thursday morning, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin enjoyed the thrill of a blastoff starting what was supposed to be an express, six-hour trip to the International Space Station.

In a split-second that changed, when an emergency light flashed inside their Russian Soyuz spacecraft signaling a problem with the rocket.

Computers jettisoned the crew capsule from the Soyuz FG booster as it flew about 31 miles high. The crew radioed that it was OK, briefly felt weightlessness and high G-forces during a cannonball-like drop to the steppes of Kazakstan, then landed safely under parachutes 34 minutes after the abort.

Russian search-and-rescue teams in all-terrain vehicles and helicopters quickly descended on the capsule to retrieve Hague, 43, and Ovchinin, 47, reuniting them hours later with family members at the launch site a few hundred miles away in Baikonur.

“I’m grateful that everyone is safe,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who attended the launch. “A thorough investigation into the cause of the incident will be conducted.”

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The rare failure by a crew-carrying Soyuz rocket means the International Space Station will be shorthanded in the coming months, tended by only three crew members.

At worst, NASA and its 15 international partners might need to abandon the $100 billion station temporarily if the rocket investigation takes more than a few months.

The launch mishap also highlighted the shortcomings of U.S. policy that for more than seven years, since NASA’s final space shuttle mission in 2011, has made Soyuz rockets and spacecraft astronauts’ only ride to and from the station.

Boeing and SpaceX capsules now under development are not expected to be ready for crewed test flights from Florida before next summer at best.

But after Thursday’s drama, those concerns were secondary to relief that the Soyuz abort system had done its job, and Hague and Ovchinin were alive and well.

The last time a Soyuz launch was aborted was in 1983, due to a fire on the launch pad. The last in-flight failure occurred in 1975.

“It wasn’t quite the day that we planned, but it is great to have Nick and Alexey at least here back on ground again,” said Kenny Todd, NASA’s space station operations integration manager. “Anytime you can get a crew safely home, you feel very good about what you’ve accomplished that particular day.”

The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, immediately formed a commission to investigate the rocket failure.

The problem occurred shortly after four liquid-fueled, strap-on boosters had fallen away from the core booster, about seven minutes before the crew should have reached orbit.

Cameras up to that point showed Hague — who was launching to space for the first time — and Ovchinin, a second-time flier, calmly monitoring checklists. A small stuffed owl dangled inside the capsule, ready to signal the crew’s arrival in weightlessness.

Instead, they never made it above the internationally recognized boundary of space 62 miles up.

Officials said it was too soon to speculate how long the rocket investigation might take.

“We have every confidence that our Russian colleagues will figure out what’s going on, and we’ll hopefully see Nick and Alexey on orbit and at the space station again soon,” said Todd.

In the short-term, the station has plenty of food, oxygen and other supplies to support the three-person Expedition 57 crew including NASA’s Serena Aunon-Chancellor, cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev and Alexander Gerst of Germany.

Important spacewalks to install new batteries — which were expected to involve Hague — will likely be delayed. Science research will be scaled back, with the crew more focused on keeping station systems running smoothly.

A looming question is how long the station crew can stay aboard the football field-length orbiting laboratory complex before their Soyuz must return home.

They were scheduled to return Dec. 13 to end a six-month stay, with a new three-person crew launching a week later on Dec. 20.

Astronauts have lived on the ISS for nearly a year, so there’s no rush to leave for health reasons.

But a Soyuz typically is limited to about 200 days in orbit, a deadline that arrives in early January, unless it can be extended.

If the Soyuz must fly home before the next crew is cleared to launch, the station — which will soon celebrate 18 consecutive years with people living and working on board — might need to be left untended.

Officials said the station could fly uncrewed for many months as long as critical systems like pumps continue to function, solar arrays continue to rotate and batteries remain charged.

“There’s nothing that says we can’t just continue to bore holes in the sky and do a minimal amount of commanding (from the ground),” said Todd. “I’m not too concerned about that as long as our systems continue to operate at the level that they’re at now.”

One possible option to avoid leaving the station empty might be to launch a new Soyuz without anyone on it to the station, giving the crew there a fresh ride.

The Soyuz issues might force a delay to the first uncrewed test flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon from Kennedy Space Center, now tentatively planned in January, but which might slip on its own.

Another potential concern is that a long-term grounding of the Soyuz could spur a rush to launch astronauts on the Crew Dragon or Boeing's CST-100 Starliner before they are ready.

Schedule pressure was an important contributor to NASA’s two space shuttle disasters, something officials said they have not forgotten.

“We think about past accidents every single day at work here,” said Reid Wiseman, deputy chief of the astronaut office. “When we decide that it’s time to fly, we’ll get on the vehicle and we’ll go fly.”

Contact Dean at 321-917-4534 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FlameTrench.

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