CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At least one rocket made it off the ground on Tuesday with cargo destined for an orbiting space station.
A Russian Soyuz booster lifted off Tuesday at 4:07 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (20:07 GMT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying an un-piloted Progress resupply ship to the Russian space station Mir.
The launch came about 14 minutes after the time NASA's shuttle Atlantis was to have lifted off from Florida on a mission to the International Space Station. High winds, however, intervened and grounded the shuttle for a second straight day.
Progress M 1-2 is now on a two-day journey to reach Mir and is scheduled to dock with the station's Kvant module about 5:30 p.m. EDT (21:30 GMT) Thursday, according to a statement by MirCorp, the private venture that is footing the bill for the current Mir mission.
Two cosmonauts -- mission commander Sergei Zaletin and flight engineer Alexander Kalery -- are aboard the 14-year-old outpost as part of a commercial effort to keep the station healthy and alive -- possibly to serve as a destination for future space tourists.
Their mission began with a launch from Kazakhstan on April 4. Two days later they boarded the station, which had been abandoned since last August, and began turning systems back on and making urgent repairs.
"Mir is in good shape, and we see no reason why its useful life should not be extended," Zaletin radioed to a control center near Moscow on April 6.
A Progress supply ship sent up to Mir before the crew arrived is to be undocked from the station on Wednesday and sent on a suicide dive into Earth's atmosphere. The craft has no protective heat shield.
That will clear the way for a new Progress to approach the station and dock on Thursday. Forty minutes later the hatch is scheduled to be opened and then on Friday Zaletin and Kalery will begin unpacking the 4,570 pounds (2,073 kilograms) of fresh food, water and experiments inside.
With a larger-than-usual supply of fuel on board, the Progress also will be used during the weekend to raise Mir's orbit and prolong the orbital life of the station.
SPACE.com staff writer Anatoly Zak contributed to this report.
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