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ISS scientific program to be corrected due to Progress crash

It is likely that some experiments will be halted

KOROLYOV, September 16 (Itar-Tass) — There will be some changes in the programme for scientific experiments aboard the ISS due to the Progress M-12M crash, Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) chief Vladimir Popovkin said on Friday at the press conference after the successful landing of the Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft with three cosmonauts aboard.

"The programme for experiments will be corrected," he said.

Specialists will assess the contribution of each experiment to determine their sequence, Popovkin explained. "As the station will be used till 2020, we have possibility for manoeuvring, and we’ll use it," he added.

Central Machine-Building Research Institute Director General Gennady Raikunov said the progress crash resulted in time loss (to conduct experiments), as new instruments are lost, and other ones must be made and sent to the ISS. It is likely that some experiments will be halted, he said.

Russian cosmonauts Andrei Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyayev, who returned to Earth on Friday, delivered about 40 kilogrammes of "results of scientific experiments", Energia Rocket and Space Corporation Designer General Vitaly Lopota said. "We have completed almost all we planned," he added.