U.S., Russian astronauts land safely after rocket malfunction

A U.S. astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut touched down safely Thursday after a malfunction on their Russian booster rocket triggered an emergency landing. U.S. astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin took off from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for the International Space Station—it was to be Hague’s first mission to space. Two minutes after departure, one of the booster rockets failed and the astronauts’ capsule automatically separated from the spacecraft. The capsule landed 12 miles east of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. A search and rescue team reached the crew and flew them by helicopter to Baikonur, where they underwent medical checks but appeared unharmed.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a Twitter post confirmed both men were fine. He said a “thorough investigation into the cause of the incident will be conducted.”

The incident is the Russian space program’s first manned launch failure since September 1983, when a Soyuz rocket exploded on the launchpad. But the program has faced a string of other mishaps recently. In August, the International Space Station crew discovered a hole in the wall of a docked Russian Soyuz capsule, which caused a loss of cabin pressure before it was patched.