Russia resumes manned spaceflight after failures
Russia on Monday launches three astronauts for the International Space Station on a key mission Moscow hopes will restore faith in its space programme after an unprecedented string of failures.
Two Russians and one American will blast off on a Soyuz-FG rocket from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 0414 GMT, the first manned launch since the retirement of the US shuttle made Russia the sole nation capable of taking humans to the ISS.
It is also the first launch after an unmanned Progress supply vessel bound for the ISS crashed into Siberia shortly after takeoff from Baikonur in August, in Russia’s worst space mishap in years.
That catastrophe, blamed on a technical malfunction, prompted a complete rejig of the timetable for launches to the ISS and the temporary grounding of Soyuz rockets, the mainstay of the Russian space programme for decades.