Russia reschedules Soyuz launch after failure to blast off

Russian space agency Roscosmos has delayed the launch of a Soyuz rocket carrying a Progress cargo ship by two days after Sunday’s planned lift-off was aborted at the last minute.

“During the launch, an order was made for the engines to be automatically turned off, the causes are being clarified,” a Roscosmos statement said.

“The launch is rescheduled for the reserve date of February 13.”

The supply freighter, known as Progress 69, was mounted atop a Soyuz2.1a which had been scheduled to lift off from Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the aim of reaching the International Space Station (ISS) in a record three-and-a-half hours.

Earlier, a source in the Russian space agency told news agency Interfax that the launch may have failed due to a computer failure in the control system.