Aborted launch astronauts could go to space next spring – Russian space agency

Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and US astronaut Nick Hague will likely fly into space in the spring of 2019 after their flight was aborted this week, Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said on Friday. They will fly again and are provisionally scheduled to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in spring of next year, he said, following their dramatic emergency landing in Kazakhstan after the failure of the Soyuz rocket carrying them to the ISS. Rogozin said on Twitter that the two astronauts had arrived in Moscow. A health official told TASS on Friday that Ovchinin and Hague are feeling OK after Thursday’s failed mission to the ISS. “Everything went fine for them, their capsule landed, the g-force they had to experience was moderate and did not last for long. We found them almost immediately,” said Deputy Head of Russia’s Federal Biomedical Agency Vyacheslav Rogozhnikov. He added that Ovchinin and Hague had no contraindications for further space missions after the failed launch and subsequent ballistic descent.