They were en route to the International Space Station after blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan when the three-stage booster suffered an emergency shutdown.
What is the Russian Soyuz rocket?
Soyuz – which means union in Russian – is the name given to series of spacecraft and rockets originally developed in the Soviet era.
The spacecraft are designed to carry crews of three in its cramped quarters and while it is one of the oldest designs it is also one of the safest.
Over the years the spacecraft has been continuously upgraded and has become the workhorse of the International Space Station, ferrying astronauts back and forth from it.
The Soyuz rocket has now made 1700 manned and unmanned launches, making it the most frequently used launch vehicle in the world.
The rocket consists of three stages that provide thrust at various points in the flight until the Soyuz capsule finally settles into orbit around the Earth.
Stage one consists of four boosters, each 65 feet in length.
Together, they provide the main thrust in the first two minutes of the flight and are subsequently jettisoned.
The second stage, or central core, takes care of the next 168 seconds of the rockets flight and the third propels it into orbit – less than nine minutes after launch.
Who was on board?
Two astronauts, Russian Alexey Ovchinin and Nick Hague from the United States, were on board at the time of the crash.
It's the first space mission for Hague, who joined NASA's astronaut corps in 2013, while Ovchinin spent six months on the station in 2016.
Ovchinin, 47, is a Russian military pilot-instructor who was selected for cosmonaut training with the country’s Roscosmos space agency in 2006.
The 43-year-old Hague, from Hoxie, Kansas, is a US Air Force Academy graduate who married a classmate.
Colonel Hague went on to earn a master's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before becoming a test pilot.
Relations between Moscow and Washington have sunk to post-Cold War lows over the crisis in Ukraine, the war in Syria and allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential vote.
But Russia and the U.S. have maintained cooperation in space.
Why were they going to the International Space Station?
The arrival of Hague and Ovchinin would have brought the ISS crew complement to five.
They were due to be a part of ISS Expedition 57 beginning in October and lasting for six months.
Already on board are mission commander Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos, NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor.
According to Nasa, the crew members are due to part in about 250 research investigations and technology demonstrations not possible on Earth.
Science conducted on the space station will enable future long-duration human and robotic exploration into deep space, including the Moon and Mars, says the agency.
They’re also expected to be on board during the first unmanned test flights of the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing CST-100 Starliner.
They are part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which will return astronauts to US soil.
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