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After cancellation last week, Russian spacecraft takes off from Kazakhstan

Article originally published in English

The rocket carries NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, Russian Oleg Novitsky and Marina Vasilevskaya, from Belarus.

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The Russian Soyuz rocket took off for the International Space Station on Saturday, two days after its launch was aborted.

The launch was initially scheduled for Thursday, but was interrupted by an automatic safety system about 20 seconds before the scheduled liftoff.

The head of the Russian space agency, Yuri Borisov, said a voltage drop in a power source caused the sudden cancellation.

On Saturday, the space capsule at the top of the rocket separated and entered orbit eight minutes after its launch, beginning a two-day, 34-orbit journey until reaching the space station.

If the launch had gone as planned on Thursday, the trip would have been much shorter, requiring just two orbits.

The three astronauts on board will join the station’s current crew, made up of NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara, Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt and Jeanette Epps, as well as Russians Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and Alexander Grebenkin.

The International Space Station is one of the last areas of collaboration between Russia and the West, in the middle of a period of great war tension caused by Moscow’s military action in Ukraine.

NASA and its partners hope to continue operating the orbiting outpost until 2030.

Russia has continued to rely on modified versions of Soviet-designed rockets to transport commercial satellites as well as crews and cargo to the space station.

The article is in Portuguese

Tags: cancellation week Russian spacecraft takes Kazakhstan

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