The Progress 45 mission awaits lift off from Kazakhstan on Sunday. Photo Credit/NASA TV
A Soyuz rocket soared into Earth orbit with the Progress 45 cargo capsule early Sunday, marking the first mission of the venerable Russian launcher to the International Space Station since the late August crash of a similar supply craft.
The Aug. 24 loss led to a suspension of Soyuz launches, including those carrying three person crews to the orbiting science laboratory.
Sunday’s lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan eased concerns among the U. S.-led, 15-nation station partnership that the six person outpost faced a temporary de-staffing in mid-November if the Russians could not quickly identify the root clause of the crash and execute a recovery plan.
“We congratulate our Russian colleagues on Sunday’s successful launch of Progress 45,” said William Gernstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, in a post launch statement. “Pending the outcome of a series of flight readiness meetings in the coming weeks, this successful flight sets the stage for the next Soyuz launch, planned for mid-November.”
Preparations are under way for a Nov. 14 Soyuz launching with American Dan Burbank and Russians Anatoly Ivanishin and Anton Shkaplerov.
The latest Progress rose from a remote pad in the Kazakh desert at 6:11 a.m., EDT. Nine minutes later, the ship was safely in orbit, with power producing solar arrays and communications antennas properly deployed.
The freighter — carrying nearly three tons of propellant, water, oxygen, spare parts and research gear — is scheduled to dock with the space station on Wednesday at 7:40 a.m., EDT.
Investigators traced the cause of the Aug. 24 loss to a blockage in a third stage fuel line. The low fuel flow to a gas generator caused temperatures to rise and the flight control system to shut down the rocket 320 seconds into the climb to orbit. The Progress 44 capsule plummeted into the remote Altai region of eastern Russia.
The contaminant was introduced during an inspection that followed a pre-launch test firing. Russia responded by re-calling propulsion hardware assigned to other missions and stepped up quality control processes by the manufacturer.
Sunday’s launch was the second in a two mission recovery plan by unpiloted Soyuz payloads. The first lofted a navigation satellite in early October.
Originally scheduled to lift off on Sept. 21, the launching of Burbank, Ivanishin and Shkaplerov was delayed until Russia could complete its investigation.
The three men will reach the station on Nov. 16. Six days later, American Mike Fossum, Russian Sergei Volkov and Japanese Satoshi Furukawa are scheduled to descend to Earth in another Soyuz, spacecraft, ending a 167 day mission.
The outpost should resume regular six person operations with the Dec. 21-23 launch and docking of a Soyuz with American, Russian and European astronauts.
Station staffing was reduced to three on Sept. 16, when two Russians and an American departed aboard a Soyuz spacecraft.
The Russian spacecraft became the only means of transporting astronauts to the station with the July retirement of NASA’s space shuttle fleet.