A booster rocket carrying a Soyuz spacecraft with a Russian and U.S. astronaut on board headed for the International Space Station failed mid-air on Thursday, forcing the crew to make an emergency landing.
The rocket was carrying U.S. astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin.
Footage from inside the Soyuz showed the two men being shaken around at the moment the failure occurred, with their arms and legs flailing.
The rocket was launched from the Soviet-era cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport located in an area of southern Kazakhstan leased to Russia, the world’s first and largest operational space launch facility.
A Reuters reporter, who observed the launch from around 1 km away, said it had gone smoothly in its initial stages and that the failure of the booster rockets must have occurred at higher altitude.
Russian news agencies reported that the crew had safely made an…
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