About three weeks after the crash of the cargo spacecraft destined for the space station - failure of a second launch to Russia * The launch of the astronauts to the station was postponed

Russia postpones the launch of the astronauts to the space station until the malfunction that caused the crash of the cargo spaceship on its way to the station is investigated.

Yesterday (Saturday, May 16, 2015) at 05:47 GMT, a Proton rocket exploded shortly after launch from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan. In the explosion, the launcher's cargo also crashed - a Mexican communication satellite.

In a statement from the Russian Federal Space Agency, the explosion took place 497 seconds after launch.
Also this time the malfunction occurred in the third stage of the missile, this time it is a Proton Breeze-M missile. The explosion was broadcast live and in the video you can see the missile disappearing into the cloudy sky immediately after launch. According to Space.com, this is the sixth Proton rocket to explode on launch in the last three and a half years.

The unmanned disaster has an impact on the manned program, because they use the same technologies.

Russia and its partners in the International Space Station decided to postpone the rotation of the station crew that was supposed to take place on May 13. It will probably be postponed to the beginning of July. This is to allow the teams of the Russian space agency Roscosmos to check the reasons for the malfunction that caused a spacecraft of the Progress model that was carrying equipment and food to the space station to fall into the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner.

The Russians lost control of the spacecraft shortly after launch on April 28. Three crew members: Terry Virts who was the station commander on behalf of NASA, Samantha Cristoforti from the European Space Agency and Anton Shkapelrov from Russia. The three have been on the station since November 2014. Although they can be landed safely, but then the station will remain for a long time with a limited crew of three people, which mainly harms the scientific activity, due to the expected delay in the launch of their replacements.

Although the launch that went out of control was unmanned, the Soyuz spacecraft, which are the only launch vehicles for astronauts to the space station since the American shuttle program was stopped in 2011, operate with the same technology, and therefore it is necessary to check what happened, so that the malfunction does not repeat itself with a manned launch.
NASA reassures that there is enough equipment until the fall of 2015 even if no new supply spacecraft arrives.

The video of the launch as transmitted by the Russian television network RT, starting at 1:50:00

For news on the space.com website about the crash of the Proton launcher (including the video describing the moments of the explosion itself)

For the news in Universe Today about the proton crash

For the news in Universe Today about the postponement of the manned launch