MOSCOW (AP) — A U.S. astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut have arrived in the Moscow region following a failed launch to the International Space Station that forced an emergency landing.
NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin blasted off to the orbiting lab on Thursday but had to use an escape capsule less than two minutes into the flight after their Soyuz rocket suffered an unspecified failure of its second stage.
Roscosmos director general Dmitry Rogozin, who traveled to Kazakhstan to bring the crew back, posted a picture of himself and the two men Friday, saying they are safely back in the Moscow region.
Thursday’s incident was Russia or the Soviet Union’s first manned launch failure since September 1983, when a Soyuz exploded on the launch pad.
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