BAIKONUR COSMODROME, March 23. /TASS/. The crew of the Soyuz MS-25 manned spacecraft is in orbit, feeling normal, Roscosmos Director General Yury Borisov said.
"The crew is already in orbit, feeling normal, so we will be waiting for tomorrow’s docking," he said following the successful launch of the Soyuz-2.1a from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
The 21st crew flying to the International Space Station (ISS) includes the first Belarusian participant in space flights Marina Vasilevskaya, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson. The two-day approach pattern will be used for the flight to the ISS. The spacecraft is expected to dock at the nodal module Prichal of the ISS’ Russian segment on March 25 at 6:10 p.m. Moscow time (3:10 p.m. GMT).
On Thursday, the launch of the Soyuz-2.1a vehicle, which was to put into orbit the Soyuz MS-25 manned spacecraft with the crew of the 21st expedition to the ISS, was automatically aborted at the Baikonur space site seconds before lift-off. According to Roscosmos CEO Yuri Borisov, the cancelation was caused by a slump in the current of a chemical power source. The crew was not affected.
In the history of Russian cosmonautics, there have been no earlier cancelations of crewed launches when the crew were already in the seats. In the Soviet Union, this happened once in 1969, when the launch of the Soyuz-4 spacecraft with cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov on board was canceled.