Roscosmos chief to inform NASA and ESA on probe into Soyuz booster incident

Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos Head Dmitry Rogozin has promised to provide US and European partners with all the information on the results of Russian experts’ work and measures taken to restore the reliability of Soyuz boosters, Roscosmos said on its website on Monday.

The Roscosmos management held a video conference with the European Space Agency (ESA) on Monday. During the telecoms link-up, ESA Chief Dietrich Woerner expressed his full support for the Roscosmos team’s efforts and readiness to render all possible assistance in its work to reveal the causes of the aborted Soyuz-FG booster’s launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on October 11.

"Roscosmos Head Dmitry Rogozin promised to provide European and US partners with all the necessary information on the results of the work of our experts and measures taken to restore the reliability of Soyuz carrier rockets for ensuring the safe delivery of crews to the International Space Station," Roscosmos said in a statement.

The sides also discussed the issues of preparing the launch of a new stage of the ExoMars-2020 Roscosmos-ESA mission, and also other promising joint projects planned for their implementation in the next few years, the statement reads.

A Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with a manned Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft blasted off from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome to the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, at 11:40 a.m. Moscow time. On board the spacecraft were Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin (the commander of the Soyuz MS-10) and NASA astronaut Nick Hague.

Following a smooth liftoff, the Soyuz’s booster malfunctioned between the first and second stages of separating, whereupon the crew was forced to abort the flight and switch to ballistic descent. The manned Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft ended up landing in the Kazakh steppe.

The press office of Russia’s Central Military District reported that rescuers recovered the crew from the descent capsule. Later, the crewmembers were examined and found to be in good condition. After their medical check-up in the town of Baikonur, the astronauts were transported to Moscow.

This is the first emergency landing with this type of carrier rocket over the past 35 years.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague, who returned to Moscow from the Baikonur spaceport on October 12 after the Soyuz booster’s failure, flew to the United States on October 13, the Cosmonaut Training Center’s press service told TASS.