But the two powers cheered in unison when a Russian rocket successfully launched Friday bearing much-needed supplies for the global Space Station. According to said website, ROSCOSMOS switched to the older Soyuz-U rocket for Friday’s launch. The attempts were made to send a wagon carrying food, water and toothpaste for the space station’s crew. Therefore, NASA hasn’t ordered any additional cargo to be taken to the ISS following Sunday’s failure.
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The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo spaceship dazzled in the moments after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on June 28, 2015 but were soon doomed to a sudden catastrophic destruction barely two minutes later in the inset photo (left).
The current mission is carrying more food than previous ones. It was unclear what caused the rocket to fail, but a Federal Aviation Administration investigation is underway. NASA intends to begin launching astronauts to the station by late 2017 using Boeing and SpaceX contracted launch services – if the initiative is sufficiently funded. Fridays launch, also from Kazakhstan, appeared to have been problem-free. The boosters separated from the rocket, falling back to Earth for a crash landing 216 miles (348 km) from the launch pad.
Despite the loss of all three vehicles, the ISS has several months of key provisions available to its crew.
NASA says the three-person crew on the space station has enough supplies to last until October, even without the gear on the latest rocket. Bill Nelson, who flew on the space shuttle himself in 1986 and is now the ranking member of the committee that oversees NASA, said in a statement, cited by the magazine. “They’ve done a tremendous job of balancing all the consumables on orbit”.
The SpaceX Falcon9 rocket was boosting a Dragon supply capsule stocked with a spacesuit, water filtration equipment, food, water, and experiments submitted by students.
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“If we had any further delays in our resupplies, particularly past mid September, October, then we’d have some issues”, station astronaut Scott Kelly said Thursday. But if anything goes wrong, Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Korniyenko will dock it manually. The situation certainly isn’t making things easy for the one-year station crew, which is approaching flight day 100.
