THIS is the nerve-wracking moment Vladimir Putin's crewed space rocket launch was aborted with seconds to spare.
The Russian Soyuz spacecraft was all but ready to set off towards the International Space Station when a technical glitch set alarm bells ringing.
Smoke could be seen coming from beneath the rocket as it prepared to eject into space, with staff having already evacuated the area.
But with just 20 seconds to go, it was announced an “automated launch abort has been initiated”.
The technical glitch had been seen with seconds remaining in the launch capsule, prompting space chief's to immediately pull the plug on the mission.
The crew of three - two women and a man - were safely evacuated from the rocket, narrowly avoiding disaster.
“The reason was a voltage drop in the chemical current source,” said Russian Space Agency chief Yuri Borisov.
“The automation worked during the launch control and prevented the spaceship’s systems from malfunctioning.
“The crew is safe, left the rocket and went to remove their spacesuits.”
The blast off has now been rescheduled for Saturday afternoon.
The crew included NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, 54, along with the first woman cosmonaut from Belarus, Marina Vasilevskaya, 33.
Vasilevskaya is normally a flight attendant on Belavia airline, flying on Boeing and Embraer planes.
Before this she was a professional ballroom dancer for 15 years.
The commander is Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, 52.
“Colleagues, space is like this and the situation is quite understandable," said Borisov, who spoke to Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko to explain why Vasilevskaya was still on the ground.
But the aborted launch is highly unusual.
In the history of modern Russia, manned launches have never been cancelled when a crew was already inside a spacecraft, reported news agency TASS.
In the USSR this happened only once, when the Soyuz-4 launch, which was manned by cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov, was aborted in 1969.
However, a rocket did malfunction while blasting into space at 4,790mph in 2018.
Two astronauts miraculously survived an emergency landing after the rocket boosters of Russia's Soyuz MS-10 failed at 164,000ft shortly after take-off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Russia's latest rocket launch comes after plans were announced alongside China to put a nuclear reactor on the moon within the next decade.
As the space race hots up, the two nations are hoping to install the unit by 2035.
Putin is also keen on putting his very own space station up in the sky.
The former spy said in October that the first segment of Russia's new space station should be fully operational by 2027.
But a bombshell warning from US intelligence last month suggested Russia could be planning to launch a satellite-destroying weapon armed with a nuke into space.
Mad despot Putin has already tested orbital weapons designed for blasting Western kit - such as the anti-satellite weapon, Cosmos 2543.
Whatever happens, Putin will be hoping his next space launch is more successful than Russia’s Luna-25 disaster last year.
The nations first moon mission in 50 years ended in a catastrophic failure as Putin's robot spacecraft spun out of control and crashed.
The 800kg Luna-25 probe was smashed to pieces as it plunged from orbit onto the surface.
