MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th October, 2018) Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, one of the crew members of the failed Soyuz spacecraft, will not be able to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) until 2020, because all future teams are already formed until then, a source in the space industry said on Friday.
On Thursday, an accident occurred during the launch of a Soyuz-FG launch vehicle carrying the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft with two new ISS crew members on board. Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague safely returned to Earth in a jettisoned escape capsule.
"The crews are already formed. They are undergoing training and have certain tasks. The logistics related to the equipment and cargo depend on them. Alexey Ovchinin will be appointed to the nearest crew which has not been formed yet, meaning the flight will be no earlier than 2020," the source said.
The incident became the first failure of a manned space launch in modern Russian history. The crash is being investigated by a special commission of Russia's Roscosmos. All manned launches from the Baikonur cosmodrome have been suspended until the commission finds out the causes of the failure.
