Russian Fed. sends supplies to Int'l Space Station
An unmanned Russian cargo rocket, headed for the International Space Station (ISS), has been launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as planned.
The Russians had already made clear that, despite the Columbia space shuttle disaster in the US, they would go ahead with their launch.
[...]The vessel, which is controlled from the ground, is set to bring supplies to the three-man crew aboard the ISS - two Americans and one Russian.
The ISS team, called Expedition 6, arrived at the space station for a four-month mission in early December aboard US space shuttle Endeavor. They have enough supplies to last them until June.
[...]A BBC space correspondent says that when the first of them, Challenger, was lost, in 1986, it forced a fundamental rethink of space policy in the United States.
But our correspondent says the loss of Columbia will force a reassessment throughout the world.
Russia's last accident with a manned craft came in 1971 when it lost three astronauts in a Soyuz-11 craft on re-entry.
[...]RSA spokesman Vyacheslav Mikhailichenko said the Columbia tragedy may prompt space officials to only use Soyuz rockets to transport crew to and from the space station in the near future, ITAR-Tass reports.
But another RSA spokesman told ITAR-Tass that Russia's space agency only had two Soyuz rockets capable of carrying crews to and from the space station, urging US and Russia officials to help the space agency build new rockets.
[...]
Tass also quoted James Newman, Nasa's director of human space programmes in Russia, as saying that space co-operation between Russia and the United States was bound to intensify.
Now the 2 Americans and 1 Russian up on the ISS will have supplies and, of course, they already have a Soyuz escape vehicle up there should they need to come home.
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