The first 3D bioprinter that was to be launched into space was incinerated on Thursday after a Soyuz spacecraft crashed due to a malfunction during liftoff, a source in the rocket and space industry told Sputnik on Friday.

"The bioprinter was in the habitation module, which jettisoned from the escape capsule of the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft and fully burnt," the source said.

Earlier this week, Yousef Hesuani, a co-founder and managing partner of the company that produced the bioprinter, told Sputnik that the unique bioprinter, called OrganAut, would be delivered by the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft to the ISS for the world’s first experiment on printing organs in space.

On Thursday, an accident occurred during the launch of a Soyuz-FG launch vehicle carrying the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft with two new International Space Station (ISS) crew members on board. Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague safely returned to Earth in a jettisoned escape capsule. The precise cause of the incident has still not been announced.