Astronaut Recalls ‘Violently’ Plunging Back to Earth After Failed Rocket Launch
TERRIFYING
“We're like if you throw a baseball up in the air, it's going to follow this ballistic trajectory.”
Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters
U.S. astronaut Nick Hague opened up about what it was like to literally be thrown back to Earth after a failed Soyuz rocket launch last week. The Kansas native was on his first voyage to the International Space Station with Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. Initially, their take-off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan seemed like it would go smoothly. But two minutes in, due to a problem with the booster, the launch ascent was aborted. “We were violently shaken side to side, thrust back into our seats as the launch escape system ripped us away from the rocket,” Hague was quoted as saying by CNN. As Hague and Ovchinin were plunged into ballistic reentry and descent, the American astronaut said he felt absolute “weightlessness.” “We're like if you throw a baseball up in the air, it's going to follow this ballistic trajectory,” he said. “That weightlessness was when we were peaking out and getting ready to fall back down to the Earth.” Hague said he gave a “huge sigh of relief” after landing roughly at the end of the 15-minute ordeal, which he said was accurately summed up by retired astronaut Scott Kelly’s comparison to “going over Niagara Falls in a barrel but while you're on fire.”
