Rocket bound for ISS fails, crew survives emergency landing

A two-man crew bound for the International Space Station was forced to make an emergency landing when their Soyuz rocket failed shortly after blast-off on Thursday, in a major setback for Russia's beleaguered space industry.

US astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin were rescued without injuries in Kazakhstan.

Russian investigators said they were launching a criminal probe into the incident, the first accident on such a manned flight in the country's post-Soviet history. The Russian space industry has suffered a series of problems in recent years, including the loss of a number of satellites and other spacecraft.

"The emergency rescue system worked, the vessel was able to land in Kazakhstan... the crew are alive," the Russian space agency Roscosmos said in a tweet. "An accident with the booster, two minutes, 45 seconds," the voice of Ovchinin could be heard saying calmly in live-streamed footage of the launch from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome.

The incident came as the rocket was travelling about 4,700 miles (7,563 kilometres) per hour, just 119 seconds into the voyage, according to NASA.

"Shortly after launch, there was an anomaly with the booster and the launch ascent was aborted, resulting in a ballistic landing of the spacecraft," the US space agency said in a statement.

Rescue workers reached the site of the emergency landing and evacuated Ovchinin and Hague. Roscosmos published pictures of the men on a sofa in the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan, having their blood pressure taken.

The descent was sharper than usual, meaning the crew was subjected to a greater G-force, but they were prepared for this scenario in training, according to a commentator on NASA's video livestream of the launch.

"We're tightening our seatbelts," Ovchinin said in the video. "That was a short flight."