Russian Soyuz-2.1a rocket blasts off, to deliver a figurine of E.T. alien from Steven Spielberg’s movie

 

MOSCOW – Just a few days after its failed mission to the moon, Russia’s Soyuz-2.1a rocket carrying the Progress MS-24 cargo spaceship and perhaps a figurine of E.T. an alien from Steven Spielberg’s movie has blasted off from Site 31 of the Baikonur spaceport, according to the Roscosmos State Space Corporation’s broadcast.

In about nine minutes, the spaceship will be delivered into orbit and it is expected to dock with the Zvezda module of the International Space Station (ISS) at 6:50 a.m. Moscow time (3:50 a.m. GMT) on Friday.

Meanwhile, the Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket has delivered the Progress MS-24 cargo spaceship into orbit.

The rocket is decorated with images dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the Russian city of Yekaterinburg and the 100th anniversary of Vladimir Utkin, a designer of intercontinental ballistic missiles and spacecraft.

Progress MS-24 is expected to deliver about 2.5 metric tons of cargo to the ISS, including 500 kilograms of fuel, 420 liters of drinking water, 40 kilograms of compressed nitrogen, as well as 1,535 kilograms of resource equipment and tools, experiment setups, medical monitoring kits, sanitation supplies and clothing.

Officials at the Research Institute of Food and Concentrate Industry and Special Food Technology told TASS earlier that the cargo spaceship would also deliver food to Russian cosmonauts to the space outpost.

The Russian crew’s psychological support service, added that a figurine of the E.T. alien from Steven Spielberg’s movie would be delivered to the ISS upon Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev’s request.