Moscow, Sep 3 (IANS): A Russian spacecraft on Thursday avoided collision with a Japanese rocket fragment during its flight to the International Space Station (ISS).
The Russian Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday with a three-member crew on board, EFE news reported.
Two experts, one Russian and another American, from the ballistic control centres of flights, calculated precisely the flight route to avoid a collision with the pieces of Japanese rocket launched in 1989.
The spacecraft will dock at the ISS orbital platform on Friday.
It was initially planned that the spacecraft will dock at the ISS six hours after launch, but the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, decided to change the flight schedule for security reasons.