U.S.-Russian Crew Blasts Off to Space

A U.S.-Russian crew blasted off today on a Russian Soyuz spaceship in the first mission to the orbiting international space station since the breakup of the Columbia shuttle.

Astronaut Edward Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, shown on a big screen here at Mission Control Center just outside Moscow, calmly continued working at the controls during the launch without showing any reaction to blastoff -- other than waving to the camera 17 seconds into the flight.

The two were originally scheduled to fly to the station in March on the shuttle Atlantis. But with the grounding of the U.S. shuttle fleet after the Columbia disaster in February -- which killed all seven crew members -- the Soyuz craft are the only vehicles available to ferry crews to and from the space station, about 220 miles above Earth.

Lu, wearing a blue space jumpsuit, had told reporters at the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan that he would wear a badge from the Columbia mission in memory of those who died.

“We are doing what I think they would have wanted and what their families wished them to do: to continue the process of flying into space,” Lu said. “One of the things that we have been talking about, thinking about, before the flight, is that they never really completed their mission.”

The Soyuz is scheduled to link up with the station Monday. The crew aboard the station -- Americans Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and Russian Nikolai Budarin -- will return to Earth in May in another Soyuz capsule, which is docked at the station as an emergency escape craft. The crew has been in space since November.

Lu and Malenchenko, the commander of the mission, are space veterans. They worked at the station in 2000, and took a spacewalk together, as they prepared it for the first long-term crew.

Lu expressed particular pleasure Friday that he was staying in the same room at Baikonur’s Cosmonaut Hotel as the Russian crew involved in a 1975 docking of the Soyuz and Apollo spacecraft -- a rare example of U.S.-Soviet cooperation during the Cold War.

Malenchenko is a hero to the Russian program because while at the space station Mir in 1994, he succeeded in manually docking a Progress cargo ship after it twice failed to dock under an automatic guidance system. The maneuver had never been carried out before, and some believe that Mir would have been shut down had he failed.

Three years later, Lu visited Mir. Plans now are for the two men to spend 165 days at the international station.

The Columbia disaster has left the Russians with a crucial role in the functioning and perhaps even the survival of the station, a joint project of the U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency.

Today’s launch “may not have that much significance from the technical point of view -- it is just a standard launch, like many previous ones,” said Yaroslav Golovanov, a prominent Russian journalist who has written books on the history of space exploration and underwent training as a cosmonaut. But this first launch since the Columbia disaster “is important symbolically,” he said.

“The launch convincingly shows one more time how highly important cooperation in space is nowadays,” he said. “With American shuttles grounded after the tragedy, Russia -- the only other country in the world that has the ability to send space vehicles to the international space station -- has stepped in to keep the ISS project running without any interruptions. It is a convincing example of how the two can accomplish what one would not be able to do.”

For as long as the U.S. shuttle fleet is grounded, there must be at least two Soyuz flights a year to the space station, with crews bringing up a new ship and riding the old one back down. Otherwise, the station would have to be abandoned because the batteries on the non-reusable Soyuz have a limited life, meaning no craft could remain at the station as an emergency escape vehicle for more than about six months.

“The Americans helped us in the past when the shuttles were still flying,” said Konstantin Kredenko, a spokesman for the Russian Aviation and Space Agency. “They transported some equipment to the station for us. And what is extremely important, they would bring back our docking system for us, which could be reused both for the Progress and Soyuz vehicles. Now we are answering in kind.”

Moscow announced this month that it would accelerate funding of its space program in an effort to build enough Progress cargo craft and three-seat Soyuz vehicles to head off the threat that the station might have to be mothballed. Although it could be remotely operated and later occupied again, Russian and U.S. officials have said that if it is left empty, there is a risk that technicians might lose control of it. It would then eventually spin out of orbit and crash to Earth.

Though the Soyuz can carry three astronauts, space officials limited the crew for today’s launch to two. That allowed additional room for supplies, particularly of food and water, and reduced consumption needs at the station for the next six months.

A shuttle can carry seven people and a 25-ton payload, far more than the Russian Soyuz and Progress craft.

Malenchenko said that with the smaller crew and reduced ability to carry equipment to the station because of the shuttle disaster, many projects planned for this mission had to be canceled.

The main task for himself and Lu will be to keep the station functioning properly, he said.

“The program, however, is an extensive one,” Malenchenko said. “We have a lot of work, and there will be no time to get bored.”

In Washington on Friday, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe praised Lu and Malenchenko as “an outstanding combination” and took note of the burden they will shoulder doing what is usually the work of three.

“This is going to be historic, no doubt about that, and a real challenge for them,” he said.

NASA sent its No. 2 official, Deputy Administrator Frederick Gregory, to observe the launch.

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Times staff writer Nick Anderson in Washington contributed to this report.