An astronaut of the UAE, scheduled to travel to the International Space Station in April has rejected to undertake the historic journey. The reason for cancelling the mission to the International Space Station on the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft was due to the minor accident which led to the emergency landing in Kazakhstan recently.
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“In April, the UAE astronaut will not definitely fly to the ISS. He will not fly because there is no spaceship. They should have returned to the Earth along with Alexei Ovchinin on board the Soyuz MS-10,” he said, according to Tass.
Although, there have been no considerations so far that Ovchinin would replace UAE astronaut in the Soyuz MS-12 mission to the ISS. It can be explained by the fact that two Russian cosmonauts are aboard the ISS now. “A principal decision should follow so that the ISS Russian segment can host three members. The matter is not about Ovchinin, but that there should be a transition to a complete crew,” he explained.
A Soyuz-FG carrier rocket with a manned Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft blasted off from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome to the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, at 11:40 a.m. Moscow time.
On board, the spacecraft were Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin (the commander of the Soyuz MS-10) and NASA astronaut Nick Hague. Post a smooth liftoff, the Soyuz’s booster malfunctioned between the first and second stages of separating, when the crew was forced to abort the flight and switch to ballistic descent. The manned Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft ended up landing in Kazakhstan. This is the first emergency landing with this type of carrier rocket over the past 35 years.
