MOSCOW, June 14. /TASS/. A Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket with a Progress MS-06 space freighter has blasted off from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station (ISS), Russia’s Mission Control told TASS on Wednesday.

"A Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket has been launched," Mission Control said.

The space freighter carries about 2.4 tonnes of various cargoes, including dry cargo, fuel, water, pressurized gases, and also equipment for scientific comprehensive experiments, including the Tanyusha-YuGZU, Sfera-53 and TNS-0 No. 2 nanosatellites. They are planned to be launched into outer space during a cosmonauts’ spacewalk in August.

In about nine and a half minutes after the launch, the carrier rocket will bring the spacecraft into the low near-Earth orbit.

After its separation from the carrier rocket, the Progress MS-06 will continue its two-day flight to the ISS in an automated mode.

The space freighter is scheduled to dock with the world’s sole orbiter at 14:42 Moscow time on June 16. The Progress-MS-06 is expected to approach the ISS and arrive at the station’s docking port in an automated mode. At the same time, the automatics will be controlled by ISS cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin.

This is the second Russian space freighter sent to the ISS this year. The previous spacecraft left for the space station on February 22 and the next space freighter is expected to be launched on October 12.

The Progress MS-06 is expected to stay docked with the ISS until the first days of December 2017, after which it will be de-orbited and sunk in the Pacific Ocean.