Russian rocket heads to space station

American astronaut among crew

? A Soyuz rocket carrying an American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut blasted off for the international space station today on a mission intended to keep space exploration going despite the Columbia tragedy.

From deep in the Kazakh steppe, the 130-foot Russian rocket, the latest version of the world’s longest-serving manned spacecraft, soared into space at 7:54 a.m. Moscow time (10:54 p.m. CDT Friday) on its way to the station, some 220 miles above Earth. Shortly after liftoff, the rocket was safely in orbit, space officials said.

Usually just a reserve, safety vehicle, the Soyuz TMA-2 — based loosely on the same technology that sent Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961 — is now Earth’s only link with the $60 billion space outpost. NASA and the Russian space program are relying on it to get the three-man crew currently on the station home, and ferry up their replacements.

“This is a big responsibility right now,” the U.S. astronaut, Edward Lu of Webster, N.Y., said Friday. “We will be continuing human space flight.”

Columbia disintegrated on Feb. 1 over Texas, killing all seven astronauts on board and raising questions about what would happen to the space station, which is heavily reliant on the U.S. vehicle.

Russia agreed to step in to take up the slack, a move that both NASA and Russian space officials have said is testament to the new era of cooperation between their agencies, once fierce competitors.

Russian officials rearranged their space schedule to accommodate Lu and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, who initially had planned to hitch a ride to the station on board the shuttle Atlantis.

They will replace U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin, who have been in space since November. The trio will return to Earth in early May on another Soyuz after giving Lu and Malenchenko a weeklong tour.