A few hours ago the Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and went en route to the International Space Station carrying Aidyn Aimbetov, Sergey Volkov and Andreas Mogensen. The Soyuz is using the trajectory that requires two days of travel instead of the fast track normally used because of the Station’s position.
A little while ago the HTV-5 “Kounotori” spacecraft was captured by the robotic arm Canadarm2 of the International Space Station, operated by Kimiya Yui assisted by Kjell Lindgren. The Japanese space cargo ship, which blasted off last Wednesday, is carrying food, water, scientific experiments, propellant and various hardware. After its capture, it will take a little while before the HTV-5 starts getting moved to its berthing location on the Harmony module.
A little while ago the HTV-5 spacecraft blasted off atop a H-II rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center for a supply mission to the International Space Station. About fifteen minutes after launch, the cargo spacecraft regularly separated from the rocket’s last stage, entered a preliminary orbit and deployed its solar panels and navigation antennas.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced the conclusions of the investigation on the incident that on October 31, 2014 caused the destruction of Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane SpaceShipTwo with the consequent death of its co-pilot and the injuring of its commander. It turned out that the co-pilot unlocked the braking system too early and the SpaceShipTwo design included no security system to avoid the catastrophic consequences of that mistake.
A few hours ago the Soyuz TMA-17M spacecraft blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and after almost exactly six hours reached the International Space Station carrying Kjell Lindgren, Oleg Kononenko and Kimiya Yui. The Soyuz traveled on the fast path normally used. There were a couple of little problems because one of the spacecraft’s solar panels didn’t deploy and after the arrival it took longer than expected to balance the air pressure with the Station but in the end everything went well.
