Soyuz MS-10 crew survives emergency landing following failure of rocket booster

A Russian Soyuz MS-10 rocket carrying a Russian cosmonaut and an American astronaut set off for a six-month mission at the International Space Station on 11 October, on a relatively rare two-man launch.The space flight with NASA's Nick Hague and second-time flyer Aleksey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for the International Space Station.[caption id="attachment_5360351" align="alignnone" width="1280"]

Alexey Ovchinina and Nick Hague. Twitter[/caption]The Soyuz MS-10 mission suffered a booster failure shortly after lift-off, Russian agencies said. The mission began with an on-time lift-off at 4.40 am EDT (GMT-4; 2.40 pm local time).According to NASA, the Soyuz MS-10 to have made a special landing after a "ballistic" descent. The crew-module safely separated from the rocket and returned via spacecraft, landing the two-man crew somewhere in Kazakhistan. A rescue mission was dispatched to recover the crew.

The two crew members were "alive and set to land in Kazakhstan," Russian media reported. The MS-10 mission had to be aborted following the detection of a drop in pressure in one of the rocket boosters powering the MS-10, reported NASA commentator Brandi Dean, from the Johnson Space Center. According to a report in CBS News, there were live television views from inside the cockpit which showed Ovchinin and Hague calmly monitoring the displays as they were completely pushed back into their seats due to the steady acceleration.The report further states that the Russians have routinely practised ascent abort procedures and that the Soyuz is equipped with multiple systems to assure a safe landing at any given point.With inputs from Agence France Presse.