International Space Station crew will come home a month late, thanks to crashed Russian cargo ship

The current crew aboard the International Space Station will return to Earth roughly a month later than planned, following the accident with ISS Progress 59, the unpiloted Russian spacecraft that went haywire and disintegrated over the Pacific Ocean on May 7.

According to a source in Russia’s space industry, the three ISS members are now expected to return on June 11, not May 14.

Earlier, space industry representatives told the news agency TASS that they planned to send a cargo ship to the International Space Station, and later a manned Soyuz spacecraft. The cargo ship was tentatively scheduled to launch in late June or early July, and the piloted Soyuz would launch on July 20. TASS’ source said an official decision hadn’t yet been reached.

“It’s been decided that Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, Italian astronaut Samantha Kristoforetti, and American astronaut Terry Verts will remain on ISS for roughly a month. The 'Soyuz TMA-15M' landing module is planned to touch down in Kazakhstan on June 11,” said the source.

Interfax

• Shkaplerov, Kristoforetti, and Verts arrived at the ISS on November 23, 2014. The space station currently has another three residents: Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Mihkail Kornienko, and American astronaut Scott Kelly.
• The ISS Progress 59, a Russian cargo spacecraft, started an uncontrolled descent from orbit, after launching successfully from a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 28. On May 7, high above the Pacific Ocean, the vehicle burned up reentering Earth’s atmosphere.
• Preliminary data suggests that the ship’s third-stage booster rockets are to blame for the malfunction. A state commission will present the findings of its investigation no later than May 13, said a spokesperson for the Russian Space Agency.