NASA's Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin, pictured left to right, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan prior to their launching. Photo Credit/NASA TV.
A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying three U.S.and Russian astronauts thundered away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan late Sunday and raced toward a rendezvous with the International Space Station.
NASA astronaut Dan Burbank, Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin lifted off at 11:14 p.m., initiating the first flight of a piloted Soyuz spacecraft since the late August loss of a similar version of the venerable launcher. The rocket carried a Progress supply capsule also bound for the space station.
Sunday’s launching eased concerns of a possible evacuation of the space station that emerged as Russian engineers began their investigation of the Aug. 24 mishap and devised a recovery strategy.
“I can’t say enough about the Russian preparations for this launch,” said William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, before Sunday’s lift off. “They have done a great job of being prepared. They have looked at everything thoroughly.”
Russia’s Soyuz became the only means of transporting astronauts to and from the space station once NASA retired the U. S. shuttle fleet in late July.
The Russian launcher lived up to expectations as it climbed through heavy snow Sunday on its way to Earth orbit.
Burbank, Shkaplerov and Ivanishin are scheduled to dock with the station on Wednesday at 12:33 a.m., EDT, briefly returning the orbital outpost to six person status. The staffing was cut in half in September while the Russians mounted their recovery.
The newcomers will be greeted by Mike Fossum, of NASA, the station’s current commander, Sergey Volkov of Russia and Satoshi Furukawa of Japan. They plan to depart the station for Earth late Nov. 21, descending into Kazakhstan aboard an older Soyuz to end a 167-day voyage.
Sustained six person crew operations are scheduled to resume Dec. 23 with the docking of the Soyuz 29 spacecraft transporting a U.S., Russian and European crew.
Don Pettit, Oleg Kononenko and Andre Kuipers are scheduled to lift off from Kazakhstan two days earlier.