Tuesday’s was initially scheduled for Oct. 15 but was postponed because of problems with an unspecified piece of equipment that had to be replaced, according to Vladimir Popovkin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Russia’s space programme has suffered a series of humiliating setbacks in recent months, mostly involving unmanned missions such as satellite launches, that industry veterans blame on a decade of crimped budgets and a brain drain.

Since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet last year, the U.S. space agency NASA must rely on Russia to take astronauts to the station at a cost of $60 million each.

NASA is working with private companies to develop craft it hopes will be able to do the job by 2017.

(Reporting by Nastassia Astrasheuskaya; Editing by Kevin Liffey)