(Baikonur) Russia launched a Soyuz rocket toward the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday with two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut on board, a rare symbol of cooperation at a time of tension.
Posted at 12:14 p.m
The rocket blasted off promptly at 11:44 a.m. EST into a dark night sky from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
This launch comes less than a month after the loss of Russia’s Luna-25 lunar probe, which crashed on the moon in August, a failure that is a reminder of the difficulties that the Russian space sector has faced for years between a lack of funding and corruption scandals .
The Soyuz spacecraft is intended to carry on board the ISS veteran Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and his comrade Nikolai Tchoub, as well as NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, who, like Mr. Tchoub, is the first flight into space.
“It is a very special moment and a very pleasant feeling to be part of something that is bigger than us and that has brought so many people together. I am happy about this mission,” O’Hara said at a news conference in Baikonur on Thursday.
“The atmosphere is good, the crew is ready to carry out all the tasks assigned to them,” said Nikolai Tchoub.
The three astronauts will arrive aboard the orbital laboratory to replace Russians Sergei Prokopiv and Dmitri Peteline and American Frank Rubio, who came aboard the ISS a year ago.
Their mission had been extended due to damage to their return ship, the Soyuz MS-22, which suffered a spectacular leak while docking with the ISS in December 2022, which Moscow said was caused by the impact of a micrometeorite.
The Russian space agency therefore decided that use would only be possible in an emergency and decided to send the MS-23 spacecraft as a replacement.
The space sector is one of the few remaining areas of cooperation between Russia and the United States amid high tensions due to the conflict in Ukraine.
American Loral O’Hara said on Thursday that the ISS was “a symbol of peace and cooperation.”
“Different from what happens on Earth […] Where nations often don’t get along, we get along well up there, we understand each other and are very sensitive to our relationships. We always look out for each other,” Mr. Kononenko added.