Soyuz MS-04 launched to space station from Baikonur Cosmodrome

BAIKONUR /Kazakhstan/, April 20. /TASS/. Russia’s Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft carrying two crew members has been launched to the International Space Station (ISS) from the Baikonur Cosomdrome, a source in the Roscosmos State Corporation told TASS. The crew comprises Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA astronaut Jack Fischer. The third seat is occupied by a 70-kilogram cargo container. Initially, two Russian cosmonauts were scheduled to go to the ISS but Roscosmos decided to cut down the number of Russian crew members from three to two until the Nauka (or Science) Multifunctional Laboratory Module docks to the ISS, which means at least until the autumn of 2018. At the same time, the number of foreign astronauts will grow from three to four. The third seat on the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft was planned to be given to a foreign astronaut but the attempts to find one who would be ready to go failed. The spacecraft is scheduled to dock to the ISS in six hours after the launch while three previous flights were two days long as the Soyuz-MS spacecraft was undergoing tests. The current ISS crew consists of Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. Read more