俄罗斯向国际空间站发射货运火箭

Russia successfully launched an unmanned rocket with supplies for the International Space Station from Kazakhstan on Wednesday, hours after a catastrophic explosion destroyed a similar mission in the United States.

A Soyuz rocket and Progress 57 cargo ship blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and is expected to dock with the ISS later in the day.

On Tuesday, an unmanned commercial rocket with supplies and equipment for the space station burst into fiery fragments just seconds after liftoff from Wallops Island, in the U.S. state of Virginia off the Atlantic coast.

Orbital Sciences Corporation, the company contracted by the U.S. government to send supplies to the Space Station, says it will not launch another Antares rocket until the cause of Tuesday's explosion is determined.

No one on the ground was hurt. The U.S. space agency, NASA, said the International Space Station crew "is in no danger of running out of food or other critical supplies."