Russian cargo ship blasts off to international space station

An unmanned Russian cargo ship blasted off today for the international space station to deliver supplies and equipment to its three-man crew, space officials said.

The Progress M-59 lifted off atop a Soyuz-U booster rocket at 5.12am local time (1.12am Irish time) from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and entered orbit about nine minutes later, said Nikolai Kryuchkov, a spokesman for the Federal Space Agency.

The ship was expected to dock at the station at 2am Irish time on Saturday to deliver more than two tonnes of fuel, spacewalk gear and other supplies for the two American astronauts and the Russian cosmonaut currently on board the station.

Russia’s unmanned Progress and manned Soyuz ships have long been the workhorses of the space station programme, shuttling crews and cargo back and forth while the US space shuttle fleet was grounded.

Yesterday, fragments of another Russian cargo ship carrying rubbish and used equipment from the international space station crashed into the southern Pacific Ocean.