Until October this year, the use of Russian Soyuz spacecraft launched from Baikonur in Khazakhstan to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) had become reliable and routine. However, on 11 October, the safety of the veteran design was called into question when two astronauts were forced to abort a launch and conduct an emergency ballistic return and parachute landing back to Earth after the failure of a Soyuz booster rocket. Fortunately, both astronauts survived the accident. NASA in the US and Russian space agency Roscosmos have pledged a thorough investigation into the incident.
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