科技英语新闻:Russia to launch four more spacecraft before next February

MOSCOW, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Russian federal space agency -- Roscosmos -- has announced that it would launch four more spacecraft in the forthcoming four months, including two Soyus manned spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS).

In accordance with the work schedule of Roscosmos, two cargo spaceships -- of the "Progress" type -- will be launched on Oct.30, 2011 and on Jan.26, 2012, while the two manned spacecraft will be blast off on Nov.12 and Dec.20.

Roscosmos said on Tuesday it had been conducting consultations with NASA over updated plans of the upcoming expeditions to the ISS.

According to Roscosmos, the new launch schedule has been drafted on the basis of an investigation into an abortive launch of a cargo spaceship on Aug. 24, when the Progress M-12M cargo spaceship failed to reach the orbit due to a rocket malfunction. Russia announced on the same day to delay its future launches of manned spaceship to ISS.

After the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet, Russia's Soyuz spacecraft has become the only way for astronauts to reach the ISS until at least the middle of this decade.