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The Soyuz-2.1a rocket booster with Soyuz MS-18 space ship carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, blasts off at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Friday, April 9, 2021. /AP
A three-member crew consisting of two Russians and one American reached the International Space Station on Friday.
The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov blasted off as scheduled at 12:42 pm (0742 GMT) from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan.
They docked at the station after a two-orbit journey that lasted just over three hours.
It is the second space mission for Vande Hei and the third for Novitskiy, while Dubrov is on his first mission.
The launch came three days before the 60th anniversary of the first human flight to space by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and the 40th anniversary of the first launch of NASA's space shuttle.
"When we started, we were competing with each other and that was one of the reasons we were so successful at the beginning of human space flight," Vande Hei said at a pre-flight news conference Thursday. "And as time went on, we realized that by working together we can achieve even more. And of course, that's continuing to this day and I hope that it will continue into the future."
The three will work on hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science.
Source(s): AP
