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Russia Delays Launch of Space Station Crew

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 September 2004, 06:00 CDT

MOSCOW - Russian space officials said Tuesday technical glitches would further delay the launch of a spacecraft to carry a replacement crew to the international space station.

The launch was scheduled for Oct. 11, but would be delayed for several days because of a "malfunction in one of the spacecraft's systems," said Federal Space Agency spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko.

The space craft was originally slated to blast off on Oct. 9, but last week officials pushed that date back two days after uncovering a problem with the ship's docking system.

The Soyuz TMA-5 spacecraft is to take off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan with Russian cosmonauts Salizhan Sharipov and Yuri Shargin and U.S. astronaut Leroy Chiao.

Sharipov and Chiao are to replace Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and U.S. astronaut Mike Fincke, who are winding down a six-month mission on the orbiting station and are to come back to Earth with Shargin.

Davidenko said the earlier glitch that had prompted the first launch delay was connected to the premature detonation of one of the explosive bolts used to separate the ship's various components. "That problem has been fixed as proven by the subsequent tests," Davidenko told The Associated Press.

He said that the malfunction that caused the second delay in the launch was unrelated to the earlier problem, but did not elaborate.

Russian Soyuz spacecraft and Progress cargo ships have provided the only link with the space station since the United States grounded its shuttle fleet after Columbia broke apart over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003, killing all seven astronauts on board.

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