A Russian rocket failed with 2 people onboard, and the moment was recorded on video - here's what it shows
- A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying two people failed in mid-flight on October 12.
- The crew - NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin - had their space capsule ejected from the rocket and survived without injury.
- Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, posted a video of the botched launch to Twitter on Thursday.
Almost three weeks ago, a Soyuz rocket carrying a NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut failed in mid-flight, 31 miles above Earth's surface. The space capsule carrying the two men ripped away from the damaged rocket, then plunged back to Earth.
Thankfully, the two men onboard - Alexey Ovchinin and Nick Hague - survived without injury and landed on the ground in Kazakhstan.
"We knew that if we wanted to be successful, we needed to stay calm and we needed to execute the procedures in front of us as smoothly and efficiently as we could," Hague told The Associated Press.
After investigating the incident, Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, determined that one of the rocket's boosters failed and remained stuck to the main rocket body instead of peeling off. That failure was filmed from a camera attached to the rocket, which looked down its body.
About 84 seconds into the video, you can see one of the side boosters stick to the rocket, sending it careening back to the ground because it was too heavy.
Roscosmos has said a faulty sensor caused the failure and believes Soyuz rockets will resume launching in December (when the current three-person space station crew must return to Earth).
But the failure is worrisome, since Soyuz is the only human-rated spacecraft currently used to get people to and from the International Space Station. It's relied upon by NASA, Europe, Russia, and other partners.
SpaceX and Boeing are building new commercial spaceships to reach the space station, but they may not launch until mid-2019.
Watch the video of the rocket failure below.