Next launch of Russia spaceship to ISS expected early Nov

As a result of the August 24 Progress spacecraft crash as a result of abortive launch, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had to revise the ISS rotation schedule.

It is planned preliminarily that the launch of the next manned ship will be carried out on November 2, Fossum said, noting that the investigation into the causes of the failure of the propulsion system during the Progress blast-off continues. Several stages will be passed before the manned spacecraft launch: determining the cause of the failure, fixing the malfunction and one or two test launches using one and the same propulsion system, the astronaut explained.

Michael Fossum also noted that the ground services have started preparations for a possible operation of the ISS in an unmanned mode, however, no measures have been so far taken in orbit for this.

Given that the investigation is still ongoing, "there are a lot of things that have to stack up" to allow for an early November launch, said Michael Fossum. He said he and his two crewmates will leave the space station in the best possible condition if it must be vacated, The Associated Press reported.

"The teams in Houston are in the preliminary stages of deciding everything, from what ventilation we're going to leave running, what lights we're going to leave on, what condition each particular experiment will be on, every tank, every valve, every hatch," Fossum said. He added: "It' s too early for us to get too worried about that frankly. It will take us a few weeks to finish that up, but we have another nine or so weeks here, my crew of three. So we've got plenty of time for those kinds of things."

Astronauts have been living aboard the station, without interruption, for almost 11 years; Kazinform refers to Itar-Tass.

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