{"id":10621,"date":"2015-07-23T13:21:05","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T13:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10621"},"modified":"2015-07-23T13:21:05","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T13:21:05","slug":"rocket-carrying-russian-japanese-us-crew-docks-with-iss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=10621","title":{"rendered":"Rocket carrying Russian, Japanese, US crew docks with ISS"},"content":{"rendered":"

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan: Astronauts from Russia, Japan<\/a> and theUnited States<\/a> Thursday docked successfully with the International Space Station<\/a> under six hours after they launched, NASA<\/a> television showed.<\/p>\n

The Soyuz TMA 17M rocket – carrying cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, US astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui<\/a> of Japan – had roared skyward from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in the barren Kazakh steppe at 2102 GMT.<\/p>\n

After a fly-around at around 350 metres (1,150 feet), the rocket maneuvred to rendezvous with the ISS at 10:46 EST (0246 GMT Thursday).<\/p>\n

“We have contact,” a NASA announcer said, as the craft soared high above the coast of Ecuador, 402 kilometres (250 miles) over the Pacific.<\/p>\n

One solar array – a type of power supply that captures energy from the sun – did not deploy on time, but this did not affect the rocket’s flight as the others were still operating, the U.S. space agency said.<\/p>\n

Scientists and space enthusiasts around the world were watching the launch closely, and with some concern, since the mission had been delayed by two months because of a Russian rocket failure.<\/p>\n

Russia was in May forced to put all space travel on hold after the unmanned Progress freighter taking cargo to the ISS crashed back to Earth in late April.<\/p>\n

The doomed ship lost contact with Earth and burned up in the atmosphere. The failure, which Russia<\/a> has blamed on a problem in a Soyuz rocket, also forced a group of astronauts to spend an extra month aboard the ISS.<\/p>\n

Russian officials earlier breathed a sigh of relief, with the space agency Roscosmos saying that the third stage of the Soyuz rocket separated on time and the crew were “feeling well.”<\/p>\n

“Everything is okay, everything is according to plan,” said veteran cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, providing live commentary of the liftoff on television.<\/p>\n

A workhorse of space that dates back to the Cold War, the Soyuz is used for manned and unmanned flights.<\/p>\n

“Training… check. Equipment… check. Rocket… check. Press conference… check. We are ready to fly!!” 42-year-old Lindgren said on Twitter before the liftoff.<\/p>\n

Japan’s Yui, 45, is now the 10th Japanese astronaut to have travelled in space.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the launch, the three men met with 81-year-old cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space and one of the Apollo-Soyuz commanders.<\/p>\n

Sending the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first Sputnik satellite four years earlier are among key accomplishments of the Russian space programme and remain a major source of national pride in the country.<\/p>\n

But over the past few years, Russia has suffered several major setbacks, notably losing expensive satellites and unmanned supply ships to the ISS.<\/p>\n

NASA has funnelled $4.2 billion to Boeing and $2.6 billion to SpaceX to help the companies build a successor to the space shuttle and to encourage competition in the aerospace industry.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the world’s astronauts fly to the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz spaceships at a cost of $70 million per seat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan: Astronauts from Russia, Japan and theUnited States Thursday docked successfully with the International Space Station under six hours after they launched, NASA television showed. The Soyuz TMA 17M rocket – carrying cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, US astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui of Japan – had roared skyward from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}