Russian supply ship launched to International Space Station
MOSCOW: A Russian booster rocket yesterday successfully launched an unmanned cargo ship to the International Space Station, whose crew is anxiously awaiting it after the successive failures of two previous supply missions.
A Soyuz-U rocket blasted off flawlessly from Russia-leased Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan, placing the Progress M-28M ship into a designated orbit, safely en route to the station. On Sunday, it’s set to dock at the station currently manned by Russians Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko and NASA’s Scott Kelly.
The ship is carrying 2.4 metric tons of fuel, oxygen, water, food and other supplies for the crew, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said. The previous Progress launch in April ended in failure, and on Sunday a US supply mission failed too when SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket broke apart shortly after liftoff. The mishaps were preceded by last October’s launch pad failure of Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket, also carrying station cargo for NASA.
Despite the failures, NASA said the station is well-stocked, with enough supplies for the crew to last at least until October. However, the trouble-free launch yesterday was essential for the station program, which has exclusively relied on Russian spacecraft for ferrying crews after the grounding of the US shuttle fleet.
SpaceX still hopes to meet the target of launching astronauts from US soil again aboard the Falcon-Dragon combination in December 2017, which would allow NASA to stop buying seats from Russia to get astronauts to the space lab. The Soyuz rocket is used to propel both Soyuz manned spacecraft and Progress cargo ships to orbit, so the launch of the station’s next crew of three has been pushed back from late May to late July as space officials have looked into the reason for the rocket failure in April.
Russian space officials eventually have traced the failure to a leak from fuel and oxidizer tanks in the booster’s third stage, which they said was caused by a yet unspecified flaw in the interface between the cargo ship and the latest Soyuz modification, called Soyuz 2.
The Soyuz-U rocket used yesterday is an older sub-type of the rocket, which has been the workhorse of Soviet and Russian space programs for nearly half-a-century. Last month, the Interfax news agency reported that the Russian space agency will only be using that Soyuz modification until experts fully understand the reason behind April’s failure and fix the flaw.
The station program has been one of a few sectors where ties haven’t been hurt by a bruising Russia-West showdown over the crisis in Ukraine.
Yesterday’s liftoff came five days after a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded after launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The accident destroyed a Dragon capsule carrying about 5,000 (2,200 kg) pounds of food, science experiments and equipment, including a docking system for two new space taxis under development by SpaceX and Boeing.
The cause of the accident is under investigation. On April 28, a Russian Progress capsule failed to separate properly from the upper-stage of its Soyuz launcher, dooming the mission. Unable to reach its intended orbit, the capsule incinerated as it re-entered the atmosphere on May 8. Another launch accident on Oct. 28 by Orbital ATK destroyed a Cygnus cargo capsule bound for the station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth. A final report on that accident is still pending, said Orbital spokesman Barry Beneski. The failures cast a shadow over the still emerging space transport industry, but experts said they had not exposed any fundamental flaws. The accidents, involving three different rockets, had nothing in common “other than it’s space, and it’s difficult to go fly,” NASA Associate Administrator William Gerstenmaier told reporters after the SpaceX failure. The station, a joint project involving 15 nations which is staffed by a crew of six astronauts and cosmonauts, currently has a four-month supply of food and water, NASA said.
The arrival of the Russian cargo ship, and the planned launch of a Japanese HTV freighter in August, should replenish the station’s pantries through the end of the year, NASA said. Friday’s successful launch clears the way for three new crew members to fly to the station later this month. NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Japan’s Kimiya Yui had been preparing for a May 26 blastoff, but Russia delayed the flight while engineers analyzed the Soyuz rocket problem. The booster that botched the April cargo ship is similar to one used to fly the Russian Soyuz crew capsules. — Agencies