Russia launches space freighter to ISS

Russia on Wednesday launched an unmanned Progress cargo ship carrying supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

"The Soyuz-2.1A booster rocket with the Progress MS-06 cargo ship launched successfully from Baikonur cosmodrome at 12:20 Moscow time (0920 GMT)," Russian space agency Roscosmos said in a statement on its website.

The cargo ship, carrying more than two tonnes of essential supplies including fuel, air and equipment and parcels for astronauts, is due to dock with the ISS on Friday at 1142 GMT.

The last successful launch of a Progress ship was in February, coming after a similar craft crashed back to Earth in December last year.

A commission appointed to investigate the malfunction concluded in January that it was caused by the break-up of the Soyuz third-stage rocket engine, either due to "foreign materials" getting inside or an "assembly fault".