Soyuz MS-10 was a manned Soyuz MS spaceflight which
aborted shortly after launch on 11 October 2018 due to a failure of the Soyuz
booster rocket.
MS-10 was the 139th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft. It was intended to transport two members of the Expedition 57 crew to the International Space Station. A few minutes after liftoff, the craft went into contingency abort due to a booster failure and had to return to Earth. Both crew members, Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague, were recovered alive in good health.
The MS-10 flight abort was the first instance of a Russian manned booster accident at high altitude in 43 years, since Soyuz 18a similarly failed to make orbit in April 1975.
Soyez MS-10 at liftoff
Following the aborted spaceflight, the Russian government announced that all future manned Soyuz launches would be suspended. Roscosmos announced that it had started a full state investigation into the incident. Roscosmos ordered a state commission to investigate the incident, and a criminal investigation is also expected, according to the BBC. Another investigation had commenced a few weeks previously into how a hole came to be drilled into the wall of the Soyuz MS-09 capsule that is now docked at the space station.
The current crew of the International Space Station has been informed of the failed flight (according to NASA live voice-over). The ISS crew can return safely in the Soyuz MS-09 capsule, but only until about late-December 2018, due to the limited lifespan of "about 200 days" of the Soyuz capsule; under existing plans, they would have to leave by mid-December. If the investigation concludes with the grounding of the Soyuz, the ISS may be abandoned until the Commercial Crew Program receives proper certification; this may result in the lack of maintenance of the ISS, but "ground controllers could keep it up and running for a while". Dimitry Rogozin, chief of Roscosmos, said that the crew are planned to fly next spring.
MS-10 was the 139th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft. It was intended to transport two members of the Expedition 57 crew to the International Space Station. A few minutes after liftoff, the craft went into contingency abort due to a booster failure and had to return to Earth. Both crew members, Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague, were recovered alive in good health.
The MS-10 flight abort was the first instance of a Russian manned booster accident at high altitude in 43 years, since Soyuz 18a similarly failed to make orbit in April 1975.
Mission Launch and Abort
A few minutes
after liftoff, which took place at 08:40 UTC, the crew reported feeling
weightless and mission control declared a booster had failed. A radio call
indicated "rocket failure" had occurred 2 minutes 45 seconds into
flight. Shortly after, a contingency was declared and the spacecraft carrying
the crew performed an emergency separation. It returned to Earth in a ballistic
trajectory, during which the crew experienced "about six to seven times
Earth's gravity" followed by a successful landing. The abort occurred at
an altitude of approximately 50 kilometres (31 miles); the best available
estimates for the apogee are roughly 80 km (50 mi), suggesting that
the mission did not cross the Kármán line and thus did not qualify as a sub-orbital
spaceflight.
Recovery
At 08:55 UTC the
search and rescue team was deployed to recover the crew and the spacecraft
which had landed 402 kilometres (250 mi) from the launch site and 20
kilometres (12 mi) east of Jezkazgan ,
Kazakhstan Jezkazgan Airport Moscow
Aftermath
Following the aborted spaceflight, the Russian government announced that all future manned Soyuz launches would be suspended. Roscosmos announced that it had started a full state investigation into the incident. Roscosmos ordered a state commission to investigate the incident, and a criminal investigation is also expected, according to the BBC. Another investigation had commenced a few weeks previously into how a hole came to be drilled into the wall of the Soyuz MS-09 capsule that is now docked at the space station.
The current crew of the International Space Station has been informed of the failed flight (according to NASA live voice-over). The ISS crew can return safely in the Soyuz MS-09 capsule, but only until about late-December 2018, due to the limited lifespan of "about 200 days" of the Soyuz capsule; under existing plans, they would have to leave by mid-December. If the investigation concludes with the grounding of the Soyuz, the ISS may be abandoned until the Commercial Crew Program receives proper certification; this may result in the lack of maintenance of the ISS, but "ground controllers could keep it up and running for a while". Dimitry Rogozin, chief of Roscosmos, said that the crew are planned to fly next spring.
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