Russia Successfully Launches Soyuz-FG Carrier Rocket For 1st Time Since October Failure

KOROLEV (outside Moscow) (UrduPoint news / Sputnik - 17th November, 2018) Russia's Soyuz-FG launch vehicle lifted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on Friday for the first time since the failed launch in October, a Sputnik correspondent reported from Russia's Mission Control Center outside Moscow.

The rocket has put the Progress MS-10 space freighter carrying 2.5 metric tons of supplies on a trajectory toward the International Space Station (ISS).

The craft is now in the low Earth orbit. The control center said it had received signals showing that the cargo ship has unfolded its solar panels and antennas, and that parameters on telemetry screens "match the estimates."

The Progress spacecraft is expected to reach the ISS in two days and is scheduled to dock with the space outpost at 22:30 Moscow time (19:30 GMT) on Sunday.

It will be docked with the ISS until March 2019.

On October 11, a Soyuz-FG rocket carrying Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague malfunctioned about two minutes after the liftoff, sending their escape capsule into a steep fall back to Earth. They were not harmed.

Russia suspended all space launches following the incident, pending an investigation. An investigative committee with the Roscosmos state space agency said a faulty sensor that controlled the separation of boosters led to damage to the rocket's second stage, aborting the mission.