Russia has temporarily suspended all manned space launches
The crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has enough fuel, oxygen, water, and food to last at least six months, Vladimir Solovyov, flight director of the Russian segment of the ISS, was cited as saying by Russian news agencies on Sunday.
Russia has temporarily suspended all manned space launches after two astronauts made a dramatic emergency landing in Kazakhstan on Thursday due to the failure of the Soyuz rocket carrying them to the orbital ISS.
"There are enough reserves on the ISS which provide the living environment. We estimate the reserves are sufficient for half a year, till the summer of next year," RIA quoted Solovyov as saying.
The three astronauts currently aboard the space station - a German, a Russian and an American - were due to return to Earth in December, but may now be stuck there longer.
The Russian Space Agency said it still planned to go ahead with the next manned flight in December although the plans could change depending on the results of a commission set up to probe the incident. Interfax reported on Saturday, citing a source, that the flight could take place on Nov. 28.
The next manned flight of a Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) could take place on Nov. 28, Interfax news agency quoted a Russian space industry source on Saturday as saying.A Russian cosmonaut and a U.S. astronaut survived an aborted liftoff after a Soyuz rocket bound for the ISS failed in mid-air two minutes after the launch in Kazakhstan, leading to a dramatic emergency landing.Russia's space agency Roscosmos was not immediately available for comment on Saturday on the Interfax report.A Russian space agency official said on Friday that Russia still planned to go ahead as planned with its next manned flight to the ISS in December despite a rocket failure this week. Rocket failure astronauts will go back into space: Russian officialNew Russian space station flight planned for spring'Soyuz emergency landing could result in major payout for insurer Soglasie'
Russia may resume manned space flights on Nov 28
The Bellingcat investigative website, which claims to have unmasked the true identities of two suspects in the Salisbury poisoning case, is an instrument of the British deep state and not the media, Russia’s ambassador to London said Friday.At a press conference at the Russian embassy, Alexander Yakovenko dismissed the website’s claims that Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin are two highly-decorated officers from the Russian military intelligence agency GRU.The suspects had been originally identified by UK authorities by the aliases Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov.The investigative website revealed the true identity of the second suspect, whose full name is Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin, on Monday.In the period 2011-2018, Mishkin traveled extensively under his alias, according to Bellingcat's report.The Bellingcat website and its Russian partner organization the Insider claimed that Mishkin is a military doctor in the GRU.Bellingcat said the identification process “included multiple open sources, testimony from people familiar with the person, as well as copies of personally identifying documents, including a scanned copy of his passport”.In September, the website identified the first suspect, Anatoliy Chepiga, as a GRU colonel and recipient of the Hero of the Russian Federation award -- Russia’s highest state award.The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service in September said ‘Boshirov’ and ‘Petrov’ were wanted for conspiracy to murder Sergei Skripal and the attempted murder of his daughter Yulia and police officer Nick Bailey in March using the banned nerve agent called novichok.In an interview with Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russian TV outlet RT, the men confirmed they were the people identified by UK investigators but claimed they were coincidentally in Salisbury at the time as tourists.A British government spokesman rejected this account.“The government is clear these men are officers of the Russian military intelligence service -- the GRU -- who used a devastatingly toxic, illegal chemical weapon on the streets of our country.”Sergei Skripal and his daughter were admitted to a hospital after being found unconscious on March 4 in the English city of Salisbury. They have both since been discharged.Police officer Bailey, who was among the first to respond to the incident, also received treatment after being poisoned.Sergei Skripal was granted refuge in the UK following a 2010 spy exchange between the U.S. and Russia. Before the exchange, he had been serving a 13-year prison term for leaking information to British intelligence.In an incident in Amesbury that British authorities say involved the same nerve agent, a woman died and a man fell seriously ill.Dawn Sturgess, 44, fell ill on June 30 after handling an item contaminated with the nerve agent and was taken to a hospital, while her partner, Charlie Rowley, 45, was also exposed to the nerve agent and taken to the hospital in critical condition.The Metropolitan Police are conducting a murder investigation into the death of Sturgess.Yakovenko also said relations between the UK and Russia are “very low”, accusing the British government of not cooperating with Russia in investigations of the Salisbury incident or in the murder case of Nikolai Glushkov, the former deputy director of Russian state airline Aeroflot who was found dead in a London apartment in March.Yakovenko also denied any Russian involvement in the Salisbury poisoning or the attempted hacking of computers of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) at The Hague."We don't see any co-operation, we don't see any evidence," he reiterated.“It is a well-rehearsed line of attack.”He also said the four Russian spies extradited from the Netherlands after being caught allegedly trying to hack the OPCW’s computers were actually just Russian embassy communications and IT systems workers."They came to the Netherlands with a routine mission to the embassy to support technically the embassy and to check the communications line of the embassy for security reasons," he said.Russia to consider lending Belarus $630 mln in 2019US national security adviser to visit RussiaNew Russian space station flight planned for spring
Russia rejects claim on IDs of Salisbury suspects
The head of Russia's space agency said on Friday that two astronauts who survived the mid-air failure of a Russian rocket would fly again and would provisionally travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in spring of next year.Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, was speaking a day after Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin and American Nick Hague made a dramatic emergency landing in Kazakhstan after the failure of the Soyuz rocket carrying them to the orbital ISS.Rogozin on Friday posted a picture on Twitter of himself sat next to the two astronauts and said they had now arrived in Moscow. Both men escaped unscathed and feel fine, Roscosmos has said.The mishap occurred as the first and second stages of a Russian rocket separated shortly after the launch from Kazakhstan's Soviet-era cosmodrome of Baikonur.'Soyuz emergency landing could result in major payout for insurer Soglasie'Thursday's accident was the first serious launch problem experienced by a manned Soyuz space mission since 1983, when a crew narrowly escaped before a launch pad explosion.The Interfax news agency on Friday cited a source familiar with the Russian investigation as saying that a faulty valve had caused the first stage of the Soyuz-FG rocket to malfunction even though the valve had been properly checked before take-off.NASA has relied on Russian rockets to ferry astronauts to the space station since the United States retired its Space Shuttle programme in 2011, although the agency has announced plans for a test flight carrying two astronauts on a SpaceX commercial rocket next April.Soyuz crew out of capsule, in good condition: NASA TVSpace is an area of cooperation between the United States and Russia at a time of fraught relations. Asked about the mishap, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House he was "not worried" that American astronauts have to rely on Russia to get into space.Moscow has suspended all manned space launches, while Rogozin has ordered a state commission to investigate what went wrong. Russia's Investigative Committee has also opened a criminal investigation into the matter.Unmanned launches of the Progress spacecraft -- which carry food and other supplies to the ISS and use the same rocket system as Soyuz -- might also be suspended, Interfax has said.
Rocket failure astronauts will go back into space: Russian official
The head of Russia's space agency said on Friday that two astronauts who survived the mid-air failure of a Russian rocket would fly again and would provisionally travel to the International Space Station (ISS) in spring of next year.Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, was speaking a day after Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin and American Nick Hague made a dramatic emergency landing in Kazakhstan after the failure of the Soyuz rocket carrying them to the orbital ISS.Rogozin on Friday posted a picture on Twitter of himself sat next to the two astronauts and said they had now arrived in Moscow.Rocket carrying space station crew fails in mid air, crew safe
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