{{A Russian spaceship carrying two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut made a belated arrival at the International Space Station on Thursday, returning the orbital outpost to full staff.}}<\/p>\n
Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev and NASA astronaut Steven Swanson blasted off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket two days ago from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n
They had expected to reach the station, a $100 billion research complex that flies about 250 miles above Earth, six hours later.<\/p>\n
But about two hours after launch, the crew’s Soyuz capsule failed to fire its maneuvering engines as planned, forcing a delay to the next station docking opportunity on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The cause of the skipped rocket firing remains under investigation, said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias.<\/p>\n
Preliminary analysis shows the spaceship was 1 degree out of alignment from its predicted orientation, triggering the Soyuz computers to automatically abort the engine burn, Navias said during a NASA Television broadcast of the docking.<\/p>\n
Since Tuesday’s mishap, the Soyuz successfully conducted the necessary engine firings to reach the station.<\/p>\n
“Better late than never,” said Navias as the Soyuz made its final approach to the outpost.<\/p>\n
The crew’s prolonged journey ended at 7:53 p.m. EDT as the Soyuz slipped into a berthing port on the station’s Poisk module.<\/p>\n
The arrival of Skvortsov, Artemyev and Swanson returns the station to a full six-member crew. The orbital outpost, a project of 15 nations, has been short-staffed since two other cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut returned to Earth on March 11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{A Russian spaceship carrying two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut made a belated arrival at the International Space Station on Thursday, returning the orbital outpost to full staff.}} Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev and NASA astronaut Steven Swanson blasted off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket two days ago from the Baikonur Cosmodrome […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000051277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-13489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000051277,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13489.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13489.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13489.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13489.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13489.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13489.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000051277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13489"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=13489"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=13489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}