In the midst of severe tensions between Russia and the West, an all-Russian crew has left for the International Space Station. There they meet four Americans and one German.
Three Russian cosmonauts left the International Space Station in a Soyuz capsule on Friday. In the evening they docked there, as shown by live images from the US space agency Nasa. The Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft carrying cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov on board took off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday.
The rocket launched into the night sky (local time) over Central Asia. “Everything is normal on board,” radio messages from the ground station revealed. The crew is fine. The express flight to humanity’s outpost was supposed to take three hours. On the ISS, the cosmonauts meet two other Russians and four Americans. The German Matthias Maurer celebrated his 52nd birthday there on Friday.
After docking, the cosmonauts initially stayed in the spacecraft. Some work was still needed before the hatch could be opened.
Because of the Ukraine war: the future of the ISS is uncertain
The sanctions imposed on Moscow for attacking Ukraine have also weighed heavily on US-Russia space cooperation. Roskosmos had therefore recently left the future of the ISS open after the contract expired in 2024. NASA is aiming for a term until 2030.
In the past, unlike this time, a US astronaut or an astronaut from the European Space Agency Esa usually flew with Soyuz launches. The US space agency Nasa has been using US spacecraft to the ISS again for some time.
The Soyuz launched on Friday bears the name of the Soviet rocket designer Sergei Korolev, who was born in Zhytomyr in 1907. The city is now in Ukraine.
