On Tuesday, Russia launched a mission consisting of two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS) from the cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, thus resuming human crew launches from a recently repaired ramp, a launch carried out in the presence of the heads of NASA and Roscosmos, reports Reuters, as relayed by Agerpres.
American astronaut Anil Menon and cosmonauts Piotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina took off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-29 capsule at 10:47 EDT (14:47 GMT) towards the ISS, where they will spend about eight months as part of the 75th rotating mission on the orbital outpost.
The crew and the Soyuz capsule transporting them were placed into orbit 10 minutes after launch, marking the beginning of an orbital journey lasting about three hours to the space laboratory where they will dock at 13:56 EDT.
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The launch took place in the presence of the Roscosmos director, Dmitri Bakanov, and the NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, the first NASA chief to visit the Russian launch base since 2018. The tensions generated by the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine prevented Bill Nelson, the NASA chief during President Joe Biden’s term, from participating in such discussions.