WASHINGTON / ALMATY (Reuters) – A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a US astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday and successfully reached orbit, according to images live broadcast by the Russian space agency Roscosmos
The crew members heading to the International Space Station (ISS) are Kate Rubins, a NASA microbiologist who in 2016 became the first person to sequence DNA in space, and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov
Since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011, NASA has relied on Russia to transport its astronauts to the Space Station, a laboratory orbiting 250 miles above Earth that houses international crews of » astronauts continuously for almost 20 years
The 2014 US space agency hired Elon Musk and Boeing Co’s SpaceX to build competing space capsules in a bid to regain launch independence from NASA
The $ 8 billion program enabled SpaceX’s first manned trip to the space station in May, marking the first trip in nearly ten years
NASA bought additional crew seats from Russia as its public-private crew program suffered delays, with Rubins’ mission being the most recent
« We have an incredible partnership, » Rubins said in an interview with Star City in Russia before his flight « We will continue to train the crews here and we will bring cosmonauts to the Johnson Space Center and train. »
NASA and Roscosmos have pledged to continue the flight-sharing partnership and are in talks to fly Russian astronauts on US vehicles and fly US astronauts on Russian rockets when needed, a carrier said. word from Roscosmos to Reuters
« Of course, mutual flights are great for the reliability of the ISS and for continued operations, » the spokesperson said. « This approach (mixed crew flights) will ensure the delivery of the crew to the station, in the event of a problem with the partner spacecraft. »
(Additional reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber in Moscow; Editing by Dan Whitcomb, Leslie Adler and Andrew Osborn)
International Space Station, NASA, astronaut, Roscosmos, Kathleen Rubins, Soyuz, Sergey Ryzhikov, SpaceX
News from the world – United States – One American, two Russians take off to the Station international space
SOURCE: https://www.w24news.com
