Last week, the world watched in terror as two astronauts plummeted back to Earth inside a Soyuz capsule following a failed rocket launch.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin were forced to return to Earth in ‘ballistic mode’, instead of making the journey to the International Space Station as planned.
Now, Mr Hague has spoken out about the terrifying experience.
He said: “The first thing I really noticed was being shaken pretty violently side to side.”
This shaking, along with flashing emergency lights, signalled to the astronauts that something was seriously wrong.
But while Ovichin had experience from previous launches, this was Hague’s first time.
He said: “Everything was new for me, it was my first time. [Ovichin] was able to tell me what was normal, what was not normal.”
Hague compared the experience to being in a ball as it was thrown in the air.
He aded: “My eyes were looking out the window trying to gauge exactly where we were going to be.
“Were we going to end up landing in water? Were we going to be on the steppes of Kazakhstan? Did we make it far enough downrange that we were in hillier, more mountainous terrain?"
During the descent back down to Earth, the astronauts experienced extreme G-forces, which made breathing a struggle.
Mr Hauge said: “We needed to be prepared to endure the 7 g’s that we were going to experience.”
In total, the landing took just 34 minutes, which Mr Hague described as a ‘pretty quick instant.’
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He added: “The first moment I was able to take a deep breath in this whole ordeal was after we came to a skidding stop in our capsule.
"My window was about 12 inches from the dirt that was outside and I was able to look through that and just breathe in and take a moment and realise just how lucky we were.
“Maybe lucky’s not the right word. I think fortunate is the right word, because as I’ve mentioned before, there are just thousands of people that are working tirelessly to put the systems in place, those very systems that saved us last Thursday."
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