A crew of four people, including a Russian, launched by NASA and SpaceX is on Friday to the International Space Station (ISS), where they will stay for about six months.
The two American astronauts, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, the Japanese Kimiya Yui and the Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov took off at 11:43 a.m. local time from the Kennedy space center in Florida, aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.
“It is an honor, a privilege and a choice for us to participate in something that goes far beyond man, but it is the men who make this business formidable,” said Zena Cardman shortly before the launch.
The Crew Dragon capsule which must transport the crew, called “Endeavor” and placed at the top of the rocket, has already been used for four previous NASA missions, as well as a private mission.
The four passengers are this time the members of CREW-11, the eleventh regular rotation mission of the American crew in the ISS provided by SpaceX for NASA.
NASA and the Russian space agency ROSCOSMOS, which operate together within the ISS, have set up an astronaut exchange program, each routing a crew member from the other country.
During its six-month mission, CREW-11 will simulate aluning scenarios that could occur near the Lunar South Pole within the framework of the Artemis program led by the United States to return to the Moon.
They will also test the effects of gravity on the ability of astronauts to pilot spacecrafts, including future lunar landing.
CREW -11 also holds on the edge of the fruit, armenia grenades, which will be compared to a control batch that remained on earth in order to study the influence of microgravity on culture growth.
In constant inhabited since 2000, the flying laboratory that is the ISS serves as an essential test bench for research on space exploration, in particular concerning any missions to Mars.
Model of international cooperation bringing together Europe, Japan, the United States and Russia, the ISS began to be assembled in 1998. Its retirement was scheduled for 2024, but NASA estimated that it could operate until 2030.
Dmitry Bakanov, director of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, met this week with Sean Duffy, an interim administrator of NASA, about the future of the station. It was the first face-to-face meeting with its American counterpart since 2018.
After the deterioration of Russian-American relations due to war in Ukraine, Russia had threatened to withdraw prematurely from cooperation concerning the ISS.
On Thursday, Dmitry Bakanov confirmed that his country was determined to continue the exploitation of the ISS until 2028, and the work on its out orbit until 2030, making the international space station one of the very rare cooperation subjects between Washington and Moscow.