Aleksey Nikolayevich Ovchinin (Russian: Алексей Николаевич Овчинин; born 28 September 1971) is a Russian cosmonaut and holds the rank of Podpolkovnik (lieutenant colonel) in the Russian Air Force Reserve. He was selected as a cosmonaut in 2006 and made his first spaceflight in 2016 on Soyuz TMA-20M, where he also served as commander.
Expedition 60 was the 60th Expedition to the International Space Station, which began on 24 June 2019 with the undocking of the Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft. The expedition was commanded by Aleksey Ovchinin, who transferred from Expedition 59 together with American flight engineers Nick Hague and Christina Koch. They were joined by Aleksandr Skvortsov, Luca Parmitano and Andrew Morgan, who arrived on Soyuz MS-13 on 20 July 2019. The expedition ended on 3 October 2019, when Soyuz MS-12 (carrying Ovchinin, Hague, and spaceflight participant Hazza Al Mansouri) undocked from the station and Koch, Skvortsov, Parmitano and Morgan transferred to Expedition 61.
During this expedition's final days, the station residents totaled 9 individuals temporarily upon the arrival of Soyuz MS-15, where for the first time since the departure of Soyuz TMA-16M in September 2015, the ISS crew exceeded the standard six.
Expedition 59 was the 59th Expedition to the International Space Station. It started with the arrival of the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft carrying Aleksey Ovchinin, Nick Hague and Christina Koch, joining Oleg Kononenko, David Saint-Jacques, and Anne McClain, who transferred from Expedition 58. The expedition formally began on March 15, 2019 (March 14 in the Americas). Ovchinin and Hague were originally meant to fly to the ISS aboard Soyuz MS-10, but returned to Earth minutes after takeoff due to a contingency abort. The expedition formally ended with the undocking of the Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft carrying Kononenko, Saint-Jacques and McClain on 24 June 2019; Ovchinin, Hague and Koch transferred to Expedition 60.
Expedition 58 was the 58th expedition to the International Space Station, which began on December 20, 2018, with the departure of the Expedition 57 crew. It was commanded by cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, with astronauts Anne McClain and David Saint-Jacques as flight engineers; the trio launched on board Soyuz MS-11 on December 3, 2018, marking the 100th orbital launch of the year.
Kononenko, McClain and Saint-Jacques subsequently transferred to Expedition 59 on March 15 2019, when Aleksey Ovchinin, Nick Hague and Christina Koch arrived on board Soyuz MS-12.
Soyuz MS-10 was a crewed Soyuz MS spaceflight that aborted shortly after launch on 11 October 2018 due to a failure of the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle boosters. MS-10 was the 139th flight of a Soyuz spacecraft. It was intended to transport two members of the Expedition 57 crew to the International Space Station. A few minutes after liftoff, the craft went into contingency abort due to a booster failure and had to return to Earth. By the time the contingency abort was declared, the launch escape system (LES) tower had already been ejected and the capsule was pulled away from the rocket using the solid rocket jettison motors on the capsule fairing. Both crew members, Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague, were recovered in good health. The MS-10 flight abort was the first instance of a Russian crewed booster accident in 35 years, since Soyuz T-10-1 exploded on the launch pad in September 1983. On 1 November 2018, Russian scientists released a video recording of the mission.