Moscow. A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying three astronauts took flight towards the International Space Station this Saturday, two days after the mission was aborted at the last minute.
The spacecraft departed safely from the Baikonur launch center in Kazakhstan, carrying NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson on board; Oleg Novitsky, from Roscosmos, and the Belarusian Marina Vasilevskaya.
The launch was scheduled for Thursday, but an automatic safety system stopped it about 20 seconds before the scheduled time. The head of the Russian space agency, Yuri Borisov, said there had been a voltage drop in a power source.
The space capsule atop the rocket separated and entered orbit eight minutes after launch, beginning a two-day, 32-orbit journey to the space station. If the launch had taken place on Thursday, as planned, the trip would have required just two orbits. The docking is scheduled for Monday at 15:10 GMT.
The three astronauts will join the current crew of NASA’s Loral O’Hara, Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, and Russians Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Alexander Grebenkin.
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– 2024-04-22 00:42:43
