after Russian rocket failure
Three astronauts living on the International Space Station (ISS) were set to welcome two new crew members Thursday, but the Russian Soyuz spacecraft heading there had to make an emergency landing just minutes after takeoff.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexei Ovchinin are now safe after they were forced the make the emergency landing in Kazakhstan when a booster rocket failed.
They were on their way to the ISS, but according to former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, it may take months to fix the rocket, meaning the crew members aboard the space station may be stuck there “indefinitely.”
“Their main reaction would have been one of frustration and probably anger because they have been training for a long time to get ready for this launch. And to have the rocket fail, means they are not going to space today,” Hadfield explained during a live Q&A on Periscope Thursday.
Three astronauts are currently living on the space station: NASA’s Serena Auñón-Chancellor, Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst.
Hague and Ovchinin were scheduled to help the crew until December, when the three astronauts currently aboard were scheduled to return to Earth, according to NASA.