A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a new U.S.-Russian crew to the International Space Station failed during its ascent Thursday (Oct. 11), sending its crew capsule falling back toward Earth in a ballistic re-entry, NASA officials said. A search-and-rescue team has reached the landing site, both crewmembers are in good condition and have left the Soyuz capsule as of 6:10 a.m. EDT, NASA spokesperson Brandi Dean said during live television commentary.
The Soyuz rocket and its Soyuz MS-10 space capsule lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at about 4:47 a.m. EDT (0847 GMT) with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin aboard. The pair were due to join the three-person Expedition 57 crew already aboard the International Space Station. But something went wrong minutes after liftoff, sending the Soyuz capsule into a ballistic re-entry, NASA officials said.
"Confirming again that the today's Soyuz MS10 launch did go into a ballistic re-entry mode a little bit after its launch around 3:47 a.m Central Time (4:47 a.m. EDT/0847 GMT)," Dean said during live television commentary. "That means the crew will not be going to the International Space Station today. Instead they'll be taking a sharp landing, coming back to Earth." NASA is providing live commentary on NASA TV, which you can watch here.
The three astronauts currently on board the space station have been informed of the failed launch and their schedule for the day is being reshuffled, since they'll no longer be able to greet the incoming duo. Mission control told current station commander Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency that during landing, "the boys" experienced forces of about 6.7 G in a call that NASA later broadcast on the live commentary.
The pair landed about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. "Search and rescue crews are always pre-staged in the event something like this does happen," Dean added. Helicopters have already dispatched to look for the Soyuz space capsule, she said.
The implications here are awful but all signs point to the ISS becoming empty for the first time in 17 years at some point in the near future. The crew on the ISS may not even have a viable lifeboat as the current docked Soyuz was damaged/sabotaged on earth with a drill hole that caused the recent pressure leak. Even if they want to use it, they can't wait past the rapidly closing 200-day lifespan of the capsule.
There won't be another Soyuz launch for months while this is investigated. Those astronauts are stranded unless Russia wants to rush an uncrewed launch or the US wants to do something incredible and reconfigure the uncrewed SpaceX DM-1 mission in January or the crewed DM-2 mission in June as a lifeboat mission.
This incident will kill Soyuz and a good chunk of the Russian space program. The US isn't buying seats past 2019 and this may well be the final purchase. Between the recent Proton cargo and Soyuz cargo failures as well as the Soyuz module sabotage, Russia really has nothing going for them other than ancient designs and new hardware that is struggling to get past planning. ---