Russian, U.S. Astronauts Will Return to Star City after Breakdown

Russian astronaut Alexei Ovchinin and American Tyler Nick Hague will return on Friday to Star City, in Moscow province, after surviving on Thursday a breakdown of their Soyuz MC-10 spacecraft.

The cosmonauts will arrive this Friday at the Chkalov airfield and then will be transferred to Star City, to observed the consequences of an emergency landing at a pressure of more than six G, a measure used by specialists in the field.

The first cosmonautics accident in modern Russian history occurred a few minutes after the launch of the Soyuz MC-10 from the Kazakh Baikonur cosmodrome, when one of the four engines of the ship's booster rocket failed.

The U.S. National Space Flight Agency (known as NASA) admitted the possibility of leaving the International Space Station (ISS) unmanned by January 2019.

Sources close to the Russian agency Roskomos indicated that manned flights to the ISS could be suspended, not only from the Baikonur cosmodrome, but also from Vostochni, Plisetsk and Kuru.

Ovchinin and Hague were part of the 57/58 expedition, which had to spend more than 170 days in space and carry out dozens of experiments, including those related to the reproduction of human cells.