The successful launch of a Russian rocket in the early hours of this morning brought to an end a series of failed missions to deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS).
The eight-tonne, unmanned Russian Progress M-28M craft blasted off at 12.55am EST carrying an amalgamation of goods to the ISS including fuel, water, oxygen and air, along with food and medical supplies. The rocket is yet to complete to two-day journey to the ISS, but is now safely in orbit, according to mission control.
The success of the launch will likely come as a relief to the crew both on the ground and on the station as two previous missions have ended in failure. In late April another Russian Progress which had been loaded with three tonnes and was destined for ISS began to tumble out of control after it reached orbit, meaning that it could not dock.
Russian flight controllers and engineers were initially confused as to what had gone wrong, but the problem was later blamed on the rocket that the spacecraft had been attached to. For today's launch, Russia used an older Soyuz-U rocket in the hope that the same issue would not occur.
Nasa and its supplier, SpaceX, subsequently launched their own mission last Sunday, but this also failed after the unmanned Dragon spacecraft exploded shortly after take off, along with the Falcon 9 rocket which was propelling it.
SpaceX is a private American spaceflight company headed by PayPal billionaire Elon Musk. Nasa hired the company to supply the ISS after it retired the space shuttle and so far it has completed six successful missions, including one in April.
Nasa administrator Charles Bolden voiced his disappointment but said that the astronauts on the ISS would not be running out of supplies for some time. "We are disappointed in the loss of the latest SpaceX cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. However, the astronauts are safe aboard the station and have sufficient supplies for the next several months. We will work closely with SpaceX to understand what happened, fix the problem and return to flight."
Nasa says the three astronauts currently aboard the ISS have enough supplies to last until October and a Japanese HTV resupply craft will be launched in mid-August. Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka who are both Russian, and American Scott Kelly have been in space for 98 days so far.
The ISS, which has been in orbit since 1998, is divided into the Russian Orbital Segment and the United States Orbital Segment, but 16 countries in total are involved in the project.
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