Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft reaches low Earth orbit

BAIKONUR /Kazakhstan/, April 20. /TASS/. Russia’s Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft carrying two crew members has reached low Earth orbit and is heading for the International Space Station (ISS), a source in the Roscosmos State Corporation informed TASS. "The spacecraft has separated from the third stage of the Soyuz-FG booster rocket," the source said. The Soyuz-FG booster blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 10:13 Moscow Time. The flight to the International Space Station will proceed in accordance with the shortened six-hour schedule. That will make it possible for the crew to reach the docking unit of the Poisk module at 16:22 on the same day. The Soyuz MS spacecraft’s three previous expeditions lasted 48 hours, as those were test flights. The crew includes Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA astronaut Jack Fischer. The third seat is occupied by a 70-kilogram cargo container. Initially, two Russians were supposed to travel to the ISS, but Roscosmos decided to cut back the number of Russian crew members from three to two until the Nauka (or Science) Multifunctional Laboratory Module docks to the ISS, that is, at least until the autumn of 2018. At the same time, the number of foreign astronauts will increase from three to four. The third seat on the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft was to be given to a foreign national but attempts to find a well-trained astronaut within a short period of time have failed. The current ISS crew consists of Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky, NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. Read more