A Russian booster rocket successfully launched an unmanned cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) just days after a SpaceX cargo ship exploded over the Space Coast.

NASA and their Russian counterparts held their breaths as an unmanned Progress M-28M ship blasted off the launch pad in Kazakhstan early Friday morning. The Soyuz-U is set to dock at the station on Sunday.

On board there is more than 6,000 pounds of food, fuel and supplies for astronauts at the International Space Station.

Astronaut Scott Kelly says it’s much needed cargo. The previous Progress vehicle spun out of control in April, never making it to the ISS. And this past Sunday dealt another blow to restocking the space station’s pantry.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded just a couple minutes after liftoff from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, destroying more than 4,000 pounds of cargo. The mishaps were preceded by last October's launch pad failure of Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket, also carrying station cargo for NASA.

“Because of the last 2 vehicles that didn’t arrive, I’m still consciously thinking about you know maybe using all the food that we have, rather than scatter it in different places and trash in the space station if there’s something we don’t eat,” said Kelly.

The hope is that this Progress vehicle stays on track and is able to dock at the space station, on time, early Sunday morning.

NASA said the station is well-stocked with enough supplies to last until at least October.

“If we had any further delays in our resupply, particularly past mid-September, October, then you know we’d have some issues,” said Kelly.

A Japanese spacecraft is expected to launch with even more cargo for the space station this August. Three more astronauts will launch on a Soyuz rocket later this month as space officials look into the last rocket failure in April.

The Soyuz-U rocket is an older sub-type of the rocket, which has been the workhorse of Soviet and Russian space programs for nearly half-a-century. Last month, the Interfax news agency reported that the Russian space agency will only be using that Soyuz modification until experts fully understand the reason behind April's failure and fix the flaw.

Space X still hopes to launch astronauts from U.S. soil aboard the Falcon-Dragon combination in December 2017, which would allow NASA to stop buying seats from Russia to get astronauts to the space lab.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is still trying to figure out what caused its rocket to explode last Sunday.

Information from the Associated was used in this story.