NASA confident in Russia despite space accidents

Despite a spate of Russian space accidents last year, NASA remains confident in its partner's ability to fly crew and cargo to the International Space Station, the program manager said on Thursday.

The latest accident involved a Soyuz capsule being prepared to fly a new crew to the $100 billion orbiting research laboratory on March 29.
The spacecraft was inadvertently over-pressurized during testing, rendering it unsuitable for flight.
As a result, the next crew to fly to the station will not launch until mid-May, NASA's space station program manager Mike Suffredini told reporters on a conference call Thursday.
"This particular event is very unfortunate, but this is a complicated business and things happen," Suffredini said. "To me, this is not indicative of some over-arching problem."
"I do not know the cause - it could have been regulators, it could have been human error. They're off sorting that out. But I have every confidence that they'll figure out the cause of this and rectify it for the future," he added.