International cooperation keeps ISS astronauts supplied despite launch failures.

The Soyuz-U carrier rocket with the Russian Progress cargo spacecraft set off for the ISS as planned on July 3, 2015.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The Soyuz-U carrier rocket with the Russian Progress-M28M cargo spacecraft has been launched from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan and is headed for the International Space Station (ISS), the Russian Mission Control outside Moscow said.

“The estimated time of the transport cargo vessel’s separation from the third stage of the launch vehicle and its entering the set orbit is July 3 08:04 Moscow time [05:04 GMT],” a mission control representative said.

The Progress cargo vessel will dock with the ISS at around 10:13 (07:13) Moscow time on Sunday, July 5, according to the mission control.

The Unpiloted Russian ISS Progress . . . Russian Cargo Vessel To Bring Supplies to ISS After Falcon 9 Rocket Failure

It will bring fuel, air, food and scientific equipment for the ISS crew, which currently consists of Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka, who is the commander, and Mikhail Kornienko, as well as NASA (US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) astronaut Scott Kelly.

The launch of the Russian Progress cargo vessel comes after last week’s failed launch of the American SpaceX CRS-7 Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo ship with supplies for the ISS.

An April launch of the Progress M-27M spacecraft was unsuccessful. The spacecraft burned in the Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean after its improper separation from the Soyuz carrier rocket which was caused by fuel leaks, according to Russia’s space agency Roscosmos.

In April, 2015, the SpaceX cargo delivery backed up the failed Russian Progress flight.

In case you skimmed over the last paragraph in the quoted article above, in April, 2015, the SpaceX Dragon cargo delivery successfully brought supplies to the ISS at a time when the Russian delivery scheduled for that month had failed. This is, of course, the reverse of what occurred in June-July, 2015, described on Page 1 of this article.
To see the continuation of this article, please visit the original article here.

The spokesperson for Roscomos expressed support for the ISS astronauts as well as the SpaceX launch and cargo delivery effort.

On the date of the SpaceX crash, a spokesman for the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said, in acknowledging the crash:

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon cargo ship carrying supplies to the ISS exploded just three minutes after it had been launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

“Both half-a-year and one-year mission programs remain unchanged so far. If necessary, part of the cargo will be delivered by Russia’s Progress cargo ship which is due to be launched on July 3 and is expected to dock with the ISS on July 5,” Igor Burenkov told RIA Novosti.

Burenkov added that such incidents happen both with regard to the Russian and the US side.

“Our colleagues should be certain that if they need to deliver anything to the station urgently, they will do this using our Progress,” the Roscosmos spokesman stressed.

.
Source: original news article.