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No decision to postpone Soyuz spacecraft launch to ISS — space corporation

A source in the aerospace industry earlier told TASS that the installation of the Soyuz-FG carrier rocket at the launch site had been postponed because of strong wind
A rocket at Baikonur (archive) Sergey Savostyanov/TASS
A rocket at Baikonur (archive)
© Sergey Savostyanov/TASS

BAIKONUR, March 16. /TASS/. No decision has been taken yet to postpone the launch of the manned Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft because of the postponement of the installation of the Soyuz-FG carrier rocket at the Baikonur launch site. The time of the carrier rocket’s installation at the launch site will be determined after a meeting of the technical management to be held at 14.00 Moscow Time, the Roscosmos state corporation told TASS on Wednesday.

"No decision to postpone the launch has been taken. The time of the vertical adjustment of the space mission vehicle will be determined at the meeting of the technical management at 14.00 Moscow Time," Roscosmos said.

A source in the aerospace industry earlier told TASS that the installation of the Soyuz-FG carrier rocket at the launch site had been postponed because of strong wind.

The Soyuz TMA-20M manned spacecraft is to bring the International Space Station (ISS) a new crew, which comprises Russian cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka and NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams. The backup crew includes Russians Sergei Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko and U.S. astronaut Robert Kimbrough.

The manned spacecraft is to be launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakhstan) on March 19 at 00.26 Moscow Time. The docking with the ISS should take pace about six hours after the launch - at 06.12 Moscow Time.

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