Soyuz MS-10 was a crewed Soyuz MS spaceflight that aborted shortly after launch on 11 October 2018 due to a failure of the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle boosters. 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. By the time the contingency abort was declared, the launch escape system (LES) tower had already been ejected and the capsule was pulled away from the rocket using the solid rocket jettison motors on the capsule fairing. Both crew members, Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague, were recovered in good health. The MS-10 flight abort was the first instance of a Russian crewed booster accident in 35 years, since Soyuz T-10-1 exploded on the launch pad in September 1983. On 1 November 2018, Russian scientists released a video recording of the mission.
Launch of the Soyuz-FG rocket carrying the MS-10 spacecraft
Hague (left) and Ovchinin (right)Soyuz programme (Crewed missions)← Soyuz MS-09Soyuz MS-11 →
Nick Hague (above) and Aleksey Ovchinin (below), pictured at Pad 1/5 before launch.
Image: Expedition 57 Launch (NHQ201810110018) (cropped) 3
The Soyuz MS is a revision of the Russian spacecraft series Soyuz first launched in 2016. It is an evolution of the Soyuz TMA-M spacecraft, with modernization mostly concentrated on the communications and navigation subsystems. It is used by Roscosmos for human spaceflight. The Soyuz MS has minimal external changes with respect to the Soyuz TMA-M, mostly limited to antennas and sensors, as well as the thruster placement.
Soyuz MS-20 approaching the ISS
Soyuz spacecraft's Orbital Module
Soyuz spacecraft's Descent Module
Soyuz spacecraft's Instrumentation/Propulsion Module