Russia launched a Soyuz rocket this Friday toward the International Space Station (ISS) with two Russian cosmonauts and an American astronaut on board, an unusual symbol of cooperation at a particularly tense time in relations between Russia and the United States.
The rocket lifted off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at night at the scheduled time (1544 GMT), according to images broadcast live by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos.
The launch came less than a month after the loss of the Russian lunar probe Luna-25, which crashed on Earth’s satellite. A failure that exposed the Russian space sector’s long-standing difficulties due to a lack of funding and multiple corruption scandals.
The Soyuz rocket is intended to carry the Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko (59 years old) and Nikolai Chub (39) as well as the NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara (40), who, like Chub, is flying into space for the first time, to the ISS.
“It’s a very special moment and I have a very good feeling to be part of something that goes beyond us and has brought so many people together. “I’m excited about this mission,” O’Hara said at a news conference Thursday. in Baikonur.
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“The atmosphere is good and the crew is ready to fulfill all the tasks assigned to them,” said Nikolai Chub.
The three will succeed the Russians Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin as well as the American Frank Rubio, who joined the ISS a year ago.
Their mission was extended due to damage to the return ship, the Soyuz MS-22, which suffered a major leak while mooring to the ISS in December 2022. According to Moscow, the incident was caused by the impact of a micrometeorite.
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The space sector is one of the few where there is cooperation between Russia and the United States, in a very tense context due to the conflict in Ukraine.
The North American Loral O’Hara therefore viewed the ISS this Thursday as “a symbol of peace and cooperation”.
“In contrast to what happens on land (…), where countries often don’t get along, we get along very well up there and are very sensitive about our relationships. We care about each other,” Kononenko added.
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