Russian ship failure delays return of space station trio

Russian ship failure delays return of space station trio

Their return this week has been delayed at least until early June.

Originally scheduled to return to Earth this week, a crew of three astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) will be delayed from coming home until early June following the recent destruction of Progress 59, an unmanned Russian cargo ship. The exact date of the crew’s return has not been announced.

As part of Expedition 43, the trio first boarded the ISS on November 24 of last year. They are American Terry Virts, Samantha Cristoforetti from the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov. Scott Kelly from NASA and two Russian cosmonauts will be left behind, thus commencing Expedition 44. Included in that project will be NASA’s Kjell Lindgren, Kimiya Yui of Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency and Oleg Kononenko of Roscomos, otherwise known as the Russian Federal Space Agency. Those three are scheduled to be carried aloft in late July on board a Soyuz spacecraft Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The Progress 59 cargo ship suffered a critical malfunction and disintegrated while in an uncontrolled descent into Earth’s atmosphere. Further launches to the ISS have been put on hold until results of the investigation are available. A report is expected May 22.

The resupply ship launched April 28 atop a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan. Sometime after it separated from the third-stage booster, an unknown problem kept flight controllers from determining if manifolds related to the fuel system had pressurized or whether navigational antennas had deployed.

The next cargo ship, Progress 60, is projected to carry several tons of food and supplies to the ISS in early July.

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