Russia on Monday successfully resumed sending astronauts to the International Space Station after a break of over five months forced by the crash of a Russian spaceship into Siberia. Two Russians and an American blasted off to the orbiting laboratory on a Soyuz-FG rocket, Russia's first manned mission since the failed launch of the unmanned Progress supply ship in August temporarily grounded its Soyuz rockets.
The launch had originally been scheduled for September 22, and the delay had forced a wholesale rejig of the staffing of the space station. Russia's last manned launch was on June 7. The morning launch of the Soyuz lit up the grey skies over Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in the steppes of Kazakhstan, which were covered by an early fall of snow.
"Everything is normal and we are feeling fine," the crew reported back to mission control as television pictures showed a character from the "Angry Birds" computer game dangling in the cockpit as a mascot. Mission control reported that American Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin had successfully gone into Earth orbit in their Soyuz TMA-22 capsule.
They are due to dock with the ISS at 0533 GMT on Wednesday, joining the three crew on board the station, which has been at half its usual staffing capacity due to the delays after the Progress accident. Unusually, none of the crew had flown on a Soyuz before. Burbank is a veteran of two US shuttle missions while Shkaplerov and Ivanishin are making their first space flight. The current ISS crew of American Mike Fossum, Japan's Satoshi Furukawa and Russia's Sergei Volkov will return to Earth on November 22 and a new crew will head up from Baikonur on December 21.