In Photos: Space Station Crew's Harrowing Abort Landing After Soyuz Launch Failure

By Hanneke Weitering
published

Soyuz Checks

Bill Ingalls/NASA

Workers check out the Soyuz rocket after it was erected on the launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

On the Launchpad

Bill Ingalls/NASA

The Russian Soyuz rocket that will launch two Expedition 57 crewmembers to the International Space Station on Oct. 11 stands tall at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Prelaunch Haircut

Bill Ingalls/NASA

As per protocol, Nick Hague got his hair cut nice and short in preparation for his trip to space. Behind him is backup crew member David Saint-Jacques.

Expedition 56/57 Crew

NASA

The crew of Expedition 56 shortly before three astronauts departed earlier this month. Remaining on the station are NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor, Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, seen along the upper left of this photograph. [Here's What Today's Soyuz Launch Failure Means for Space Station Astronauts]

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.