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After a successful Soyuz launch early this morning, three astronauts are on their way to the International Space Station. Following a failed manned launch earlier this year, experts were worried about the future of the ISS, as the Soyuz rocket is currently the only platform capable of shuttling crew members to and from the space tation. While the journey to space only took a few minutes, it will reportedly take about 6 hours to catch up with the space station, meaning the crew should climb onboard sometime later today.
Check out a multi-angle video of the launch here.
In the meantime, Russian engineers quickly identified the cause of the abort: a bent component in the booster separation mechanism that apparently was caused by a mistake during the rocket's assembly. A fleet-wide inspection was carried out and four Soyuz boosters were successfully launched before Kononenko's crew was cleared for flight Monday. McClain, an Army colonel and veteran military helicopter pilot, said she had no qualms about launching aboard a Soyuz booster. She said the workhorse Russian rocket was extremely reliable and that she trusted Russian engineers to find and fix the problem. "Going to space is not easy," she told CBS News in a pre-launch interview. "The crew in October was lucky. But so is every crew that has flown in space over the last 50 years, 60 years. I'm very familiar with the rocket and with the redundancy of their systems and with their safety systems. And I'll be frank with you, I would have gotten on a rocket the day after that happened."
Check out a multi-angle video of the launch here.
In the meantime, Russian engineers quickly identified the cause of the abort: a bent component in the booster separation mechanism that apparently was caused by a mistake during the rocket's assembly. A fleet-wide inspection was carried out and four Soyuz boosters were successfully launched before Kononenko's crew was cleared for flight Monday. McClain, an Army colonel and veteran military helicopter pilot, said she had no qualms about launching aboard a Soyuz booster. She said the workhorse Russian rocket was extremely reliable and that she trusted Russian engineers to find and fix the problem. "Going to space is not easy," she told CBS News in a pre-launch interview. "The crew in October was lucky. But so is every crew that has flown in space over the last 50 years, 60 years. I'm very familiar with the rocket and with the redundancy of their systems and with their safety systems. And I'll be frank with you, I would have gotten on a rocket the day after that happened."
