An American astronaut ready to take off

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – An American astronaut said Friday that she was not reluctant to fly a Russian rocket next month, despite consecutive incidents.

Lieutenant-Colonel Anne McClain stated that space flights were never 100% safe and that it is a coincidence that the last two Soyuz missions to the International Space Station have encountered problems.

Last month, the astronauts had to make an emergency landing in Kazakhstan after a failed launch. A month earlier, an air leak from the space station had been located in a mysteriously drilled hole in a moored Soyuz capsule. Russian investigators are still trying to understand how a rocket sensor bent during manufacture and how the hole was found in the Soyuz.

McClain is scheduled to take off on Dec. 3 for his first space flight, with a Russian and a Canadian. They will spend six months aboard the laboratory in orbit.

The 39-year-old helicopter pilot, who has a young son, said his family was used to his risky job – she had been flying combat missions in the army.

Her teammates, both men, also have children, she noted during her training in Star City, Russia.

"The hardest thing in this business is getting away from children," she said in an interview. "But what I hope to teach him – and what I hope to teach all children who are interested in that – is that to accomplish any thing, it takes a lot of sacrifices. "

His own dream of becoming an astronaut goes back to preschool age in Spokane, Washington State. NASA chose it in 2013.

McClain said she considered the October 11th launching accident a "success" given the fact that the abortion system had saved the lives of her friends. Back home in Houston, she watched the flight and listened to the radio communications of the astronauts.

"The crew was lucky. But every crew that travels in orbit is lucky. Space flights are not easy, "she said.

The American on the aborted flight, Nick Hague, gave him "the scoop" on his return to Houston.

The Hague and the Russian Alexei Ovchinin have been promised another shot in space, maybe next year. But McClain said she did not know if they would arrive before the end of her mission in June.

Since the accident, three Soyuz rockets have been successfully launched with satellites. Before the launch of McClain, another Soyuz flight is planned, this one carrying supplies for the space station.

His own rocket was inspected for deformation. She is so confident in the rocket and in her many years of success that she could have boarded the Soyuz to fly the day after the accident.

Abortion was the first in 35 years of Russia's manned space flight program and the third only.

The Russian authorities pulled McClain's flight a few weeks later so that Canadian David Saint-Jacques and Russian Oleg Kononenko could spend enough time with the current three residents of the station, an American, a German and a Russian returned to Earth. December 20th.

The two Russians plan an outing in space during their timeshare to examine the Soyuz outburst from the outside. A makeshift patch keeps the spaceship airtight.

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