As they hurtled toward space faster than a rifle bullet, an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut were forced to make a harrowing but safe emergency landing on Thursday when the rocket carrying the two men and hundreds of tons of explosive fuel failed less than two minutes after liftoff.

The Russian-built Soyuz capsule parachuted to Earth about 12 to 15 miles outside Zhezqazghan, a small city in central Kazakhstan. Neither of the crew members — Nick Hague of the United States or Aleksei Ovchinin of Russia — was injured, both the Russian and American space agencies said, and the two were rescued within an hour of their landing.

The launch failure does not put the three astronauts aboard the International Space Station in any danger. They have plenty of food, water, air and other supplies. The station is a laboratory for science experiments that cannot be conducted in the pull of gravity, and NASA is using it as a testing ground for technologies for longer, farther voyages to the moon and Mars.