BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - A Russian cargo craft carrying fuel and vital equipment for space station Mir blasted off on Tuesday from the
Baikonur cosmodrome to prepare the station for a piloted mission next month.
The spacecraft, named Progress M1-1, took off at 06:47 GMT (1:47 a.m. EST) and is due to dock with Mir at 08:00 GMT on Thursday, officials at the cosmodrome said.
Apart from fuel and water, the craft carries equipment to restore air pressure inside Mir which has been losing air due to a
minor leak. A two-man crew is scheduled to travel to Mir on March 31.
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Russian officials have said that if Progress failed to automatically dock with Mir, the crew consisting of cosmonauts Sergei Zaletin and Alexander Kaleri, could be sent up earlier to do this manually.
Some officials say that the early piloted mission could start off on February 17, while others say the date could be February 8.
Russia was set this year to junk Mir, the pride and joy of its once-proud space program but decided later to prolong the life of the station after finding a foreign investor willing to pay $20 million to finance one more piloted flight.
During its 14 years in orbit, Mir has overcome a number of serious technical defects but Russian officials say Mir is in good shape.
"What we are doing cannot be called a re-animation of Mir because Mir is functioning normally," Yury Semyonov, president of Energiya rocket corporation which owns Mir told Reuters.
"According to our plans Mir will fly until end-August on a piloted regime and after that we shall decide what to do with it," he said in an interview.
Russia is a participant in the $60 billion
International Space Station (ISS) which unites the United States, the European Union and Japan and is due to take off this year from Baikonur.
West Wants Russia to Focus on ISS
The foreign partners are closely watching the Mir situation because Russia which is building the living quarters for the station has fallen behind on its obligations to the ISS program.
The United States has urged Russia to devote its resources to ISS whose launch has already been delayed several times.
But Semyonov said work on Mir did not necessarily contradict the ISS. He added that the two stations could run in tandem for a while. For instance the Progress M1 could be used for carrying supplies for the ISS as well, he said.
"Of course Mir is not eternal but we have still not exhausted its potential," Semyonov said. "At the same time ISS is a perspective for the next 15 years so we shall not set one program against another."
Tuesday's launch was the first in 2000 from Baikonur, which Russia rents from Kazakhstan for $115 million annually. A Zenit booster rocket carrying a Tselina satellite is scheduled for launch on Wednesday.
Russia also wishes to launch a
Proton rocket on February 12 though Kazakhstan has yet to lift its ban on Protons, imposed last October when the second subsequent rocket of that type crashed on the Kazakh steppes soon after takeoff.
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