A Russian Soyuz rocket has sent a cargo ship on its way to the International Space Station, a successful launch clearing the way for the next crew to travel to the space outpost.
The launch of the Russian Progress MS-10 resupply ship from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan marked the fourth successful lift-off of a Soyuz since a launch with crew members had to be aborted last month.
A Soyuz-FG rocket carrying Nasa astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos’ Alexei Ovchinin failed two minutes into its flight on October 11, activating an automatic rescue system that ensured a safe landing of their capsule.
A Russian investigation attributed the failure to a sensor that was damaged during the rocket’s final assembly.
Since the mishap, two Soyuz rockets were launched successfully from Plesetsk in northwestern Russia, while a third lifted off from French Guiana carrying satellites into orbit.
They were of a different subtype than the rocket that failed in October, but the one that lifted off Friday was the same version.
The Progress ship is set to dock at the space station on Sunday, delivering almost three tons of food, fuel, water and other supplies to the crew, Nasa’s Serena Aunon-Chancellor, Russian Sergei Prokopyev and German Alexander Gerst.
In a separate supply mission, Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket with Cygnus cargo spacecraft is scheduled to lift off on Saturday and dock at the station on Monday.
The current crew is scheduled to return to Earth next month after the arrival of their replacements.
American astronaut Anne McClain, Canadian David Saint-Jacques and Russian Oleg Kononenko are set to go up on December 3.
Speaking on Thursday at the Star City space training centre outside Moscow, Ms McClain voiced confidence in the Soyuz despite October’s aborted launch.
“We trust our rocket. We’re ready to fly,” she said.
“I think what we learned from the inside in October was how safe this rocket was.
“A lot of people called it an accident or an incident, or maybe want to use it as an example of not being safe.
“But for us it’s exactly the opposite because our friends came home, the systems worked and they worked exactly as they were designed.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here