The Soyuz TMA-17M, which had launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, docked safely at the International Space Station, transporting Kjell Lindgren of NASA, Oleg Kononenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) into orbit.
This mission came as a relief after the failure of two previous U.S. missions, both of which were resupply missions. On June 28, a SpaceX Falcon 9 blew up after takeoff while Orbital's unmanned Antares supply rocket crashed shortly after launching from Virginia, according to Bloomberg Business.
(CLICK HERE to read what Elon Musk had to say about the cause of the Falcon 9 failure.)
The Soyuz mission had been delayed for approximately two months as an unmanned Russian Progress 59 craft, carrying more than three tons of supplies, had gone out of control in April and failed to make its way to the ISS. The spacecraft had later exploded upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere, reports USA Last News.com.
Lindgren, Kononenko and Yui will join Expedition 44 Commander Gennady Padalka of Roscosmos, as well as Flight Engineers Scott Kelly of NASA and Mikhail Kornienko of Roscosmos at the ISS, according to NASA. Kelly and Kornienko are participating in the station's first year-long duration mission.
"We're confident in the rocket ... we're all very excited to launch," Lindgren, 42, told a pre-launch news conference. "It's certainly no fun to see several of the cargo vehicles undergo mishaps. It underscores the difficulty of this industry and ... how unforgiving the space environment is," reports The Guardian.
The crew at the space station will be participating in research on a variety of subjects like space headaches, whether immune system impairment caused by spaceflight increases the possibility for infection or poses a significant health risk during life aboard the space station, as well as seven categories of human health research. The research is expected to generate information on the medical, psychological and biomedical challenges faced by astronauts during long-duration spaceflight.
(To read more about some of the studies done on-board the ISS, CLICK HERE.)
