A three-man space crew featuring US and Japanese rookie astronauts as well as an experienced Russian cosmonaut yesterday blasted off for a six-month mission at the International Space Station (ISS).
Scott Tingle of NASA, Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency powered into the sky in a Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 1:21pm.
NASA TV footage from inside the Soyuz capsule showed a toy poodle made by Shkaplerov’s cousin and modeled on the cosmonaut’s family dog floating around the capsule as the spacecraft entered zero gravity.
Photo: EPA
Roscosmos confirmed the Soyuz crew had launched “successfully” in a statement on the space agency’s Web site.
While most flights to the ISS take about six hours, the trio are taking the more circuitous two-day route due to the lab’s position in space at the time of the launch. Docking is expected tomorrow at 8:43am GMT.
Both Tingle, 52, and Kanai, 40, are first-time fliers, but flight commander Shkaplerov, 43, is an experienced hand.
The former Russian military pilot has spent exactly a year in space over two missions and is to mark his birthday in orbit for the third time in February.
Shkaplerov told journalists at a preflight news conference on Saturday that he intends to vote from space in Russia’s March presidential election, which Russian President Vladimir Putin is widely expected to win.
“We [cosmonauts], like all conscientious citizens of Russia, participate in the presidential elections,” he said.
Kanai is the youngest astronaut in the history of the Japanese space agency and the last of a trio of Japanese astronauts who were certified for travel to the ISS in 2011.
Japan is not training any more astronauts for ISS missions, but announced plans earlier this year to send its first astronaut to the moon by 2030 as part of a NASA-led mission.
US Navy captain Tingle is a graduate of Purdue University in Indiana, which also counts space legend Neil Armstrong among its alumni.
Earlier this week, the mechanical engineer tweeted a photograph of a rosy dawn emerging over the frosty Kazakh steppe in Baikonur as he prepared for his debut mission.
“Sunrise at Baikonur as we head out to the Vehicle Assembly building for our second, and last, fit check!” he wrote.
The space travelers are to join Russia’s Alexander Misurkin and NASA pair Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba aboard the ISS.
Tomorrow’s docking is to mark a prompt crew rotation after Sergei Ryazansky of Roscosmos, NASA’s Randy Bresnik and European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli returned to Earth on Thursday.
NASA stopped its crewed launches to the ISS in 2011, but recently moved to increase the crew complement on the US section of the ISS to four as the Russians cut theirs to two in a cost-saving measure announced last year.
The ISS laboratory, a rare example of US and Russian cooperation, has been orbiting Earth at about 28,000kph since 1998.
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