Four astronauts from four countries yesterday rocketed toward the International Space Station (ISS).
They should reach the orbiting lab in their Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) capsule today, replacing four astronauts living up there since March.
A NASA astronaut was joined on the predawn liftoff from Kennedy Space Center by fliers from Denmark, Japan and Russia. They clasped one another’s gloved hands upon reaching orbit.
Photo: Reuters
It was the first US launch where every spacecraft seat was occupied by a different country — until now, NASA had always included two or three of its own on its SpaceX taxi flights.
A fluke in timing led to the assignments, officials said.
“We’re a united team with a common mission,” NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli radioed from orbit.
Photo: AFP
“Boy, what a beautiful launch ... and with four international crew members, really an exciting thing to see,” NASA Space Operations Associate Administrator Ken Bowersox added.
Moghbeli, a US Marine Corp pilot serving as commander, is joined on the six-month mission by the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.
“To explore space, we need to do it together,” the European Space Agency Director-General Josef Aschbacher said minutes before liftoff. “Space is really global, and international cooperation is key.”
The astronauts’ paths to space could not be more different.
Moghbeli’s parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution. Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, she joined the US Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan.
The first-time space traveler hopes to show Iranian girls that they, too, can aim high.
“Belief in yourself is something really powerful,” she said before the flight.
Mogensen worked on oil rigs off the West African coast after obtaining an engineering degree.
He told people puzzled by his job choice that “in the future we would need drillers in space” like Bruce Willis’ character in the killer asteroid film Armageddon.
He said he is convinced that rig experience led to his selection as Denmark’s first astronaut.
Furukawa spent a decade as a surgeon before making Japan’s astronaut cut. Like Mogensen, he has visited the station before.
Borisov, a space rookie, turned to engineering after studying business. He runs a freediving school in Moscow and judges the sport, in which divers shun oxygen tanks and hold their breath underwater.
One of the perks of an international crew is the food, they said.
Among the delicacies soaring: Persian herbed stew, Danish chocolate and Japanese mackerel.
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