Russian rocket blasts off for International Space Station with fresh crew
Three astronauts have left the planet Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft headed for the International Space Station (ISS).
The ship blasted off from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in the Kazakh steppe with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, US astronaut Kjell Lindgren, and Kimiya Yui of Japan onboard early on Thursday.
The group of three is expected to reach the ISS six hours after blast-off and join Russian cosmonauts Commander Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko, as well as NASA astronaut Scott Kelly.
During their stay in space the astronauts are to carry out several scientific experiments, including remotely controlling robots on earth from space.
According to Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, the space flight was initially scheduled for May 26 but was delayed after a malfunction on the Soyuz carrier rocket, Progress M-27M. The carrier burnt in the Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean following its improper separation from the Soyuz carrier rocket due to fuel leaks.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, 51-year-old Kononenko, the team commander, said that he thought everything would go as planned.
Earlier this month, he said, “Unexpected things can happen" in space. "Machinery is machinery. It can let you down. But we trust the people, the engineers who created this machinery."
The ISS is an international habitable artificial satellite in the Earth’s orbit, whose first component was launched in 1998.
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