Russian spacecraft brings cosmonauts, astronaut to ISS

The Soyuz rocket was launched from Kazakhstan on Tuesday morning

A Russian Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft has docked with the International Space Station (ISS) with two Russian cosmonauts and one astronaut from the US area company NASA on board, Russia’s Roscosmos stated on Tuesday.
The three — Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritsky and Jonny Kim — are to perform 50 scientific experiments in area earlier than their return to Earth on December 9, Roscosmos stated.
The flight to the ISS, which orbits the Earth at a median distance of round 400 kilometers (250 miles), took beneath 4 hours following the launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:47 a.m. (0547 GMT)
US-Russia cooperation in area
Despite tensions between Moscow and Washington in recent times over Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, area initiatives have remained one discipline the place some cooperation has continued.
The return of Donald Trump to the US presidency has additionally introduced with it a thaw within the US-Russian relationship.
Russia’s area program, nonetheless, is struggling amid a long-term lack of funding and has additionally suffered a number of corruption scandals together with failures, such because the Luna-25 lunar probe venture in August 2023.
The ISS, of which the primary module was launched in 1998, has been constantly inhabited since 2000.
The area station, which is split right into a Russian and a US part, is the results of collaboration by 5 area companies for the US, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.