A Russian rocket carrying vital supplies for the space station Mir will blast off today, two days after Kazakhstan eased a ban on launches from its Baikonur cosmodrome, officials said yesterday.
The Russian Space Agency's head of administration, Mr Georgy Poleshchuk, said in Baikonur that preparations for the launch of the Progress resupply ship and a Ukrainian-Russian survey satellite were under way and that both missiles were on their launch pads.
Kazakhstan suspended all launches from Baikonur, which Moscow has rented for its space launches since the collapse of the Soviet Union, after a Russian Proton-K rocket exploded shortly after lift-off last Monday.
The rocket, which exploded high above the earth, scattered debris across Kazakhstan's central Kar-Karalinsk region and local officials feared traces of the toxic fuel had entered the soil and water supply.
A ban on Proton rockets will remain in force until the final results of a joint investigation into the cause of the crash are completed.
Russian scientists said initial studies had produced no evidence that a highly toxic fuel called giptil had seeped into the water supply.
Russian officials gave dire warnings that Russia might have to dump its elderly Mir space station, currently manned by a joint Russian-French crew, unless the Progress was launched this week.
After a week of tense negotiations, Kazakhstan agreed late on Wednesday to allow launches of rockets carrying less dangerous fuel. Russia welcomed the decision. "I think that there could have been no other decision. Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine are all interested in this.
"We should have sat around the table together and talked over the matter much earlier," Mr Poleshchuk said.
The Soyuz rocket to be launched today will carry food and oxygen to the three-man Mir crew as well as a navigation system. The system is meant to prevent the troubled station from spinning out of control and out of orbit after the team leaves Mir for Earth on August 23rd, while Moscow raises funds for another crew.
Russia caused offence in the vast Central Asian state of 15 million by initially ignoring the accident and sending what Kazak hstan considered to be a low-level delegation to the scene.