US-Russian space crew lifts off for space station
Source: AP-Excite
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AP) — A U.S.-Russian space crew has blasted off successfully for the International Space Station.
The Russian Soyuz-TMA14M spacecraft lifted off as scheduled at 2:25 a.m. Friday (2025 GMT Thursday, 4:25 p.m. EDT) from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan. It's carrying NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore along with Russians Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova for a six-month stint at the station.
The Soyuz entered a designated orbit in about 10 minutes after the launch. It is set to dock at the orbiting outpost in about six hours after the launch, joining an international crew of three currently manning the station.
Serova is making her first space mission, while Wilmore and Samokutyaev have already flown to space.
FULL story at link.
Member of expedition to the International Space Station Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev walks during farewell ceremony as they get up into the spacecraft Soyuz TMA-14M before the launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2014. (AP Photo/Yuri Kochetkov, Pool)
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140925/sci--space_station-df552a976f.html
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By Matthew Bodner
Sep. 24 2014 21:24
Russia's new federal space program will allocate a whopping 321 billion rubles ($8.2 billion) to the development and utilization of the International Space Station, a byword for global space cooperation that Moscow threatened to abandon earlier this year over the crisis in Ukraine.
At a meeting with the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin was quoted by news agency Interfax as saying Russia's 2016-25 program, which is in the final stages of government approval, will heap extra funds on the $100 billion international project, "including new [space station] modules and the OKA-T automated spacecraft."
OKA-T is a major addition to the space station proposed by Russian engineers early on in the ISS program, but so far unrealized. It will be used for special research that the current facilities aboard ISS cannot conduct, and will spend most of its time flying along side the space station, rather than docked to it.
"The state is allocating very significant resources," Rogozin said, apparently contradicting earlier remarks threatening the future of the ISS program — which, with 15 nations involved in its construction and operation, is the largest international cooperative project ever undertaken by nations in peacetime.
more...
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/russia-to-inject-massive-new-funding-into-international-space-station/507779.html
