(Image source: Roscosmos / Universe Today)

BY STEVEN SPARKMAN

ANCHOR ANTHONY MARTINEZ

The first new crew to head to the International Space Station since June is set to launch tonight, and space fans are crossing their fingers that everything goes smoothly. Here’s Space.com.

“Three spaceflyers will launch to the International Space Station tonight ... to begin a months-long mission to the orbiting outpost. NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin are slated to launch aboard a Russian-built Soyuz rocket tonight ... from the Baikonour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.”

Ordinarily, the launch of a Soyuz would be no big deal, but this one is special for two reasons.

It’s the first time an American has hitched a ride aboard the Russian rocket since the space shuttle program ended this summer. It’s also the first time the Soyuz rockets have carried human passengers since a failed mission in August. (Video source: NASA)

International Business Times tells us what happened.

“...an unmanned Progress supply vessel bound for the ISS crashed into Siberia shortly after take-off from Baikonur. The mishap caused Russia to delay launches to the ISS, and Soyuz rockets, the mainstay of the Russian space program for decades, were also temporarily grounded.”

The crew launching tonight will use the same rocket system as the August mission. But while that system successfully carried a supply capsule to the ISS just weeks ago, a writer for the New York Times says Russia’s recent space failures may point to underlying problems.

“Russia has had a rough year in its space endeavors. ... Earlier in August, the failure of an upper stage of a different Russian rocket put a communication satellite in a wrong orbit. And last week, a Russian probe that was supposed to explore a Martian moon got mired in low-Earth orbit after its engines failed to fire.”

There will be more than just astronauts riding on the rocket -- like the future of manned space travel. If something goes wrong, not only would three astronauts be lost, the station itself would be left crewless for the first time ever.

A writer for the Houston Chronicle says that makes the station much more vulnerable. He outlines the worst case scenario.

“The most simple path is that before humans launch back to the station, it is lost. If this occurs what’s the private financial gain in SpaceX or Boeing building their rockets and space capsules? They just lost their biggest customer in NASA and the space station. At that point the future of NASA is bound up in the nebulous development of Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System.”

If the launch goes well, the astronauts are expected to dock at the ISS on November 16.