A Russian-American-Dutch crew blasted into space aboard a Russian spacecraft yesterday, starting a two-day journey to the international space station on the third manned mission since the halt of the US shuttle program following the Columbia disaster in February of last year.
Russian commander Gennady Padalka, American Michael Fincke and Andre Kuipers of the Netherlands, representing the European Space Agency, paused to wave farewell before boarding the Soyuz TMA-4 spacecraft.
"Until we meet again!," Padalka shouted, giving a V-for-victory sign. Fincke flashed a thumbs up, while Kuipers held up a clenched fist.
Their relatives and friends, standing with Russian and US space officials at Russia's Baikonur launch pad in the desolate steppes of Kazakhstan, craned their necks and squinted in the sunshine to follow the rocket's trajectory after blast-off.
"Sitting on a ball of a fire, going to heaven, what more can you ask for a human being?" Fincke's father Edward said. "It's more than you can wish for. It was overwhelming," Edward Finske said.
He and other relatives gathered around a monitor transmitting images from inside the capsule. The three astronauts shook hands after the spacecraft entered orbit approximately nine minutes after lift-off, then were shown taking notes on clipboards.
The spacecraft was due to reach the ISS tomorrow morning.
Padalka and Fincke, who were initially trained to fly on a US shuttle, will spend 183 days on the space station, where they are scheduled to conduct two spacewalks. Kuipers will return after nine days with the station's current crew, US astronaut Michael Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, who have been in orbit since October.
The crew will perform various experiments in space, including geographic monitoring, biotechnology and medical projects, said Joel Montalbano, NASA's flight director, who watched the launch from Russian Mission Control outside Moscow. Padalka was to cultivate the fourth generation of peas to be grown on the ISS, he said.
Yesterday's launch came amid increasingly frequent complaints from Russia that its efforts to keep the space station manned at the expense of its own space programs are underappreciated.
"We have fulfilled all our obligations," Sergei Gorbunov, the chief spokesman for Russia's space agency, said in Baikonur on Sunday.
"Russia is taking off its last pair of pants, while the US and Japan are cutting down their (space) budgets," Gorbunov said.
"This cannot last long," he said.
Facing the need to mobilize its scarce resources to keep the station afloat while the US shuttle fleet remains grounded, Russia had to freeze the construction of its own station's segment and some commercial projects, including selling space trips to rich tourists.
NASA has turned down the Russian space agency's proposal to provide financial backing for delivering more crew and cargo to the station.
Russia is now pressing NASA to agree to extend crew stints on the space station from the current six months to one year -- a move that would allow Russia to make money selling rides to handsomely paying space tourists.
Michael Baker, NASA's ISS program manager for international and crew operations, said the US space agency hoped to have the shuttle flying again by March 2005.
"We're still in difficult times with the station, with the shuttle being down," he said in Baikonur.
Under the original agreements between partners in the 16-nation space station -- the US, Russia, members of the European Space Agency, Japan and Canada -- the station was supposed to be manned by six crew members this year.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS