Soyuz successfully docks at ISS

MOSCOW: Astronauts from Russia, Japan and the United States Thursday docked successfully with the International Space Station after a two-month delay, despite a minor hiccup.
The Soyuz TMA 17M rocket — carrying cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, US astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui of Japan — blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome on schedule after a two-month delay caused by the failure of a Russian rocket during an unmanned resupply mission.
The launch and the docking were successful even though one solar array — a type of power supply that captures energy from the sun — did not deploy on time.
Both Russian and US space officials said the mishap did not affect the rocket’s flight because the other solar arrays were still operating.
“Now THAT was awesome. Thank you to everyone who made this dream come true!” Lindgren wrote on Twitter.
Russian television broadcast footage of a beaming crew next to Russia’s Gennady Padalka and Mikhail Kornienko, as well as Scott Kelly of NASA, who welcomed them on board the orbiting lab.
The spacecraft blasted off on schedule from Russian-leased Baikonur in the barren Kazakh steppe at 2102 GMT, and after a fly-around at around 350 meters (1,150 feet), the rocket maneuvered to dok with the ISS at 0246 GMT.
Russian space officials stressed that the launch had been smooth and the third stage of the Soyuz rocket had separated on time but pointed to a possible problem with solar panels.
“A commission will probably be put together. Of course this situation will be looked into,” veteran cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin said in televised remarks.
Dmitry Rogozin, deputy prime minister in charge of the space industry, ordered the Roscosmos space agency to resolve the problem.
“The same happened last year,” he said, suggesting that a possible manufacturing defect could be to blame. Scientists and space enthusiasts around the world were watching the launch closely, and with some concern, given the mission had been delayed by two months after the failure of a Russian rocket.
Russia was 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.
The doomed ship lost contact with Earth and burned up in the atmosphere. The failure, which Russia has blamed on a problem in a Soyuz rocket, also forced a group of astronauts to spend an extra month aboard the ISS.
A space workhorse dating back to the Cold War era, the Soyuz is used for both manned and unmanned flights.
Ahead of the launch, the three astronauts said they stood by the Russian space program but conceded that, in space, everything might not go as planned.