Including a piloted test flight, the launching will mark SpaceX's seventh crewed station mission.Īfter a weeklong handover to help familiarize their replacements with station operations, Lindgren, Hines, Watkins and Cristoforetti will undock and return to Earth on Oct. 29, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to wrap up a 194-day mission.įour days later, the Crew Dragon Endurance is scheduled for launch from Florida carrying Crew 5 commander Nicole Mann, pilot Josh Cassada, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina. If all goes well, Artemyev, Korsakov and Matveev will return to Earth on Sept. The arrival of the new Soyuz crew sets up a carefully choreographed sequence to replace all seven members of the station's current crew. "Essentially, it gives us a backup plan." "From the ISS side, I think it is very important in that it gives us redundancy and the ability to respond to unforeseen circumstances," Rubio said in a pre-launch interview with CBS News. Soyuz flight engineer Dmitry Petelin, left, commander Sergey Prokopyev, center, and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio wave farewell to family, friends and supporters before suiting up and heading to the launch for blastoff on a flight to the International Space Station. The goal is to ensure one crew member from each country is always on board the station even if a Soyuz or NASA ferry ship is forced to depart early in an emergency, taking its crew back to Earth along with it. His seat is the first under a new agreement between NASA and the Russian space agency to resume launching astronauts aboard the Soyuz and to begin carrying cosmonauts aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Rubio will be part of the U.S.-sponsored crew complement, although he will remain a member of the Soyuz MS-22/68S crew. Eight minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff, the Soyuz separated from the booster's third stage, solar panels unfolded and the spacecraft set off after the space station. The space station crew enjoyed a bird's eye view of the Soyuz launch as the spacecraft climbed out of the atmosphere and into the same orbit, on course for rendezvous three hours after blastoff.Īll three crew members appeared relaxed in cockpit video as they monitored their instruments, marking off milestones on the way to orbit. local time) and smoothly climbed away from its firing stand at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. With commander Sergey Prokopyev at the controls, flanked on the left by co-pilot Dmitry Petelin and on the right by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, the Soyuz 2.1a rocket roared to life at 9:54 a.m. Despite severely strained U.S.-Russian foreign relations, an American astronaut joined two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan and rocketed into orbit Wednesday on a two-orbit flight to the International Space Station.
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