(Bloomberg) -- A Russian spacecraft soared toward the
International Space Station with three astronauts after a successful
launch that contrasted with fiery failures by two for-profit U.S.
operators.
Atop a pillar of flame in the nighttime
sky, the Soyuz TMA 17M craft launched at 3:02 a.m. local time Thursday
from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the home for Russian manned
missions.
The crew -- drawn from the U.S., Russia and Japan -- is set to
reach the orbiting lab after a flight of about five hours and 43
minutes, commentator Kyle Herring said on a NASA webcast.
The
U.S. hasn’t had its own manned launches since the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration retired the space shuttle in 2011. While NASA
plans to reduce its reliance on the Soyuz program with commercial
providers, the effort has been complicated by accidents with
cargo-carrying rockets at Orbital ATK Inc. and billionaire Elon Musk’s
SpaceX.
“The continued success of the Russian Soyuz
is benefiting everyone flying to the ISS because of its reliability,”
said Lance Erickson, program coordinator for commercial space operations
at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.
NASA
has awarded contracts to SpaceX and Boeing Co. to start ferrying
astronauts into orbit by 2017. Those would be the first crew-hauling
missions for the U.S. space program, following the use of commercial
providers to loft satellites and freight.
Lessons Learned
The
U.S. search for alternatives to Russian lift vehicles for manned
flights is based on “lessons learned from single- sourcing anything
important” and a desire to end a reliance on Vladimir Putin’s government
rather than a concern over the Soyuz program, he said.
The
three astronauts -- Kjell Lindgren from the U.S., Oleg Kononenko of the
Russian Federal Space Agency and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency -- will remain in space for five months.
NASA’s
television feed of the launch showed the trio waving to the video
camera while, from the ground, the bright-orange glow of the Soyuz
engines dimmed and then disappeared as the spacecraft climbed through
the skies of central Asia.
The astronauts will work
with Commander Gennady Padalka of Roscosmos and flight engineers Scott
Kelly of NASA and Mikhail Kornienko of Roscosmos on hundreds of
experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth
science.
Another crew is scheduled to travel to the
station Sept. 1. They will only stay for 10 days after delivering a new
Soyuz rocket to the station so Kelly and Kornienko will be able to
return in 2016. The Soyuz spacecraft can only remain docked at the
station for about 180 days, so new vessels must be rotated in and out,
NASA said.
Failed Missions
The two failed U.S. missions to the station both involved resupply missions.
On
June 28, a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 blew up after takeoff, possibly stalling
NASA’s timetable for awarding the next round of space-cargo delivery
contracts.
NASA previously postponed the awards in
October, when an Orbital rocket exploded on a resupply mission.
Orbital’s unmanned Antares supply rocket crashed shortly after launching
from Virginia.
Adding to the setbacks, an unmanned
Russian Progress 59 craft spun out of control in April and failed to
make its way to the station. The spacecraft, carrying more than three
tons of supplies, exploded abruptly in Earth’s atmosphere. Another
Russian craft delivered goods to the station earlier this month.