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One American, two Russians blast off to International Space Station
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts successfully reached the International Space Station after blasting off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, live footage broadcast by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos showed.
The Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov reached the space station roughly three hours after liftoff, bringing the orbital laboratory’s crew size to five.
The mission is the last scheduled Russian flight carrying a US crew member since the space shuttle program ended in 2011.
The space station, an orbiting laboratory 400km above Earth, has housed international crews of astronauts continuously for nearly 20 years.
NASA and Roscosmos have committed to continue the flight-sharing partnership in exchange for flying Russian astronauts on US vehicles and to fly US astronauts on Russian rockets when needed, a spokesperson for Roscosmos told Reuters.