Mission Control spokesman Valery Lyndin said that the unmanned Progress M-13M blasted off as scheduled on Sunday from the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan saying the ship successfully reached a designated orbit and is set to dock at the station Wednesday.
A Progress launch failure in August that was blamed on a manufacturing flaw cast doubts about future missions to the station, because the upper stage of the booster rocket carrying the cargo ship to orbit is similar to that used to launch astronauts.
The Russian spacecraft are the only link to the station after NASA retired the space shuttle in July.
The successful launch has put fears to rest, as many in the science committee had remained worried that with US support, space travel once again could have been subjected to frequent failures and difficulties, especially during launch and reentry.
(아주경제 앤드류 이 기자)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com