After a series of three unrelated launch failures, the crew on board the International Space Station (ISS) finally got resupplied when the unmanned freighter Progress M-028M lifted off as planned from Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakhstan at 0455 GMT on 3 July 2015. The craft later rendezvoused and docked with the ISS on 5 July 2015 at 0711 GMT at the Pirs module.
The mission was launched using the standard Soyuz-U launch vehicle used to transport Progress cargo missions. This meant that there would not be another separation mishap as happened on the previous Progress M-027M on 28 April 2015 when a design/coupling issue with the new Soyuz design, the Soyuz 2-1a, caused the spacecraft to separate at the wrong time. It was subsequently damaged beyond use in a space explosion.
The Progress M-028M mission became vital to the ISS astronauts after the loss of two other ISS resupply missions: the Antares 130 launch failure which lost the Cygnus Orb 3 mission happened late last year, while in June, the launch failure of the Falcon 9R lost the Dragon CRS-7 ISS resupply flight.
