Next space station crew launches in November

Remember all those fears a few weeks back that the International Space Station might have to go unmanned come this November? It looks like those worries may have been premature.

ROSCOSMOS, the Russian space agency, announced Tuesday that it plans to launch manned Soyuz missions to the International Space Station on November 12 and December 20. The November mission is a schedule delay after the Progress cargo mission that went awry in August, which was launched by a rocket that uses a third stage that is similar to that used on manned Soyuz launches.

Progress was the fourth lost Russian spacecraft since last December. There have been concerns that the Russian program would severely delay launching new crews to the station as the agency investigated its failures. NASA, for example, delayed launching another space shuttle for nearly three years as it investigated the Challenger and Columbia shuttle accidents.

There are six people aboard the International Space Station. Three are scheduled to return home this week, and the remaining three are to leave in late November. Without the shuttle to send new crews to the station, serious delays could have required its de-manning.

ROSCOSMOS has also scheduled two Progress launches: one on October 30 and another on January 26, 2012.