The Russian cosmonaut is accompanied by two Americans and a Japanese.
A rocket made by the American company SpaceX was launched Wednesday with Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina aboard to the International Space Station (ISS) from Florida in the United States, despite tensions between Washington and Moscow having peaked since the start of the war in Ukraine.
This is the fifth regular mission to the ISS operated by SpaceX on behalf of NASA, but the first to transport a Russian citizen. The crew of “Crew-5” also consists of the Japanese Koichi Wakata and the Americans Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann. The latter becomes the first Native American to fly into space.
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Two weeks ago, an American took off for the ISS on board a Russian Soyuz rocket. The long-planned astronaut exchange program has continued despite very high tensions between the two countries since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February. Ensuring the operation of the ISS has thus become one of the very few topics of cooperation between the United States and Russia.
Transporting another nation’s citizen is “a huge responsibility,” Kathy Lueders, deputy administrator at NASA, said during a news conference in late September.
When asked about the current relationship with the Russian space agency Roscomos, she said: “In operational terms, we very much appreciated the continuity of the relationship, even in a geopolitically very difficult time.” The head of the ISS at NASA, Joel Montalbano, also had the “excellent support by Roscosmos” for these joint flights.
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Anna Kikina, 38 and an engineer by training, will become the fifth Russian professional cosmonaut to go into space. “I hope that in the near future we will have more women in the bodies of cosmonauts,” she told AFP in August.
It is also the first spaceflight of American astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, but the fifth for Japanese Koichi Wakata. After a journey of around 30 hours, your ship will dock at the station, which is around 400 kilometers above sea level, on Thursday. Crew-5 members will join the seven people already on board (two Russians, four Americans and one Italian).
A few days of handover are planned for the four Crew 4 members before being sent back to Earth. Crew-5’s crew will have to spend about five months in orbit conducting more than 200 scientific experiments, including more than 70 new ones aboard the flying laboratory.
Anna Kikina is the first Russian to fly in a Falcon 9 rocket designed by billionaire Elon Musk’s company.
The latter intervened in the debate on the war in Ukraine on Monday, urging his Twitter followers to vote on his own proposal to settle the conflict between Kyiv and Moscow. In particular, this implied the surrender of Crimea to Russia. The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, still on Twitter, replied that he should “fuck off”.
floating future
Tensions between Moscow and Washington have increased significantly in the space arena after the announcement of US sanctions against the Russian aerospace industry in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Russia announced this summer that it intends to leave the ISS “after 2024” in favor of setting up its own orbital station – without setting an exact date for withdrawal.
The head of manned flights on Roskosmos, Sergei Krikaliov, told him on Monday “hope” that the Russian government would agree to an extension of participation in the ISS after 2024. The Americans have already stated that they intend to continue operating the station until 2030. As it stands, the ISS cannot function without one of the two segments that make it up, one American and one Russian. The latter ensures in particular its maintenance in orbit thanks to a propulsion system.
Between 2011 and SpaceX’s first flight to the ISS in 2020, Russia was the only country able to send astronauts there, making NASA pay for seats aboard its rockets. The loss of this monopoly means a significant deficit for the Russian space program. The exchange of astronauts this year, which will have to be renewed in the future, will take place without financial compensation.
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