A Russian spacecraft soared toward the worldwide Space Station with three astronauts after a successful launch that contrasted with fiery failures by two for-profit US operators. The latter two have been more than four months into a almost year-long mission on the space station.
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The USA hasn’t had its own manned launches since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration retired the space shuttle in 2011. The Expedition 44 crew was scheduled to arrive at the space station about six hours later.
The 16-storey rocket lifted off at 5.02pm EDT (9.02am NZT) to deliver veteran Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and rookie astronauts Kjell Lindgren with Nasa and Japan’s Kimiya Yui into orbit.
The spaceflight is the first for Lindgren and Yui, and third for Kononenko.
This mission was postponed in May after the Soyuz-2.1a rocket failed the month before during the launch of the Progress M-27M unmanned cargo vessel carrying supplies for the ISS. The crew members will remain aboard ISS until December.
The capsule connected to the orbiting laboratory about 250 miles above earth.
The trio had been set to fly in May, but Russian Federation delayed the mission after a botched launch of a similar Soyuz rocket on April 28. One of the astronauts on board is Kjell Lindgren, who has a strong aerospace medicine background, and has Minnesota ties.
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The crew reached orbit in less than nine minutes. Though Russian investigators were confident the issue was isolated to a single Soyuz-Progress variant and would not affect crewed flights, NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, opted to delay the launch schedule while the investigation continued.
