Yahoo – AFP,
12 May 2015
Moscow (AFP) - Russia said Tuesday it would delay the return of three astronauts from the International Space Station after the recent failure of a supply ship.
A picture
taken on September 17, 2006 shows the International Space
Station over Earth
(AFP Photo)
|
Moscow (AFP) - Russia said Tuesday it would delay the return of three astronauts from the International Space Station after the recent failure of a supply ship.
The journey
home of the three crew members, originally scheduled for Thursday, has been
postponed until June, senior space official Vladimir Solovyov said.
"We
have now proposed for this landing to take place in early June," Solovyov
was quoted by the state TASS news agency as saying.
Russia's
Progress M-27M cargo ship
blasts off from the launch pad at the
Russian-leased
Baikonur cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan on April 28, 2015 (AFP Photo)
|
There are
currently six crew members on board the International Space Station (ISS).
The delayed
rotation follows the recent failure of an unmanned Russian Progress supply ship
to dock with the ISS after suffering a communications breakdown.
The
Progress craft eventually burnt up as it plummeted back to Earth last week, in
a fiery end to a mission to deliver oxygen, water and supplies.
A
commission is currently investigating the cause of the incident.
The exact
date for the next launch to the ISS will be announced after it comes out with
its finding on May 22.
Russia's
space agency said Tuesday a provisional investigation showed a problem with the
separation of the Progress spacecraft from the Soyuz rocket taking it into
orbit.
The
malfunction meant the cargo craft ended up on an orbit that was about 40
kilometres too high, the agency said in a statement.
Since the
mothballing of the US Space Shuttle programme, Moscow has had a monopoly on
sending astronauts to the ISS from its Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
But Russia
has recently suffered a series of problems exposing shortcomings in its own
programme.
A Progress
supply ship crashed in Siberia shortly after launch in 2011. Moscow has
also lost several lucrative commercial satellites.
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