The astronauts of this mission will note the current crew of the international space station.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
After the cancellation at the last minute of the launch at the start of the week, the SpaceX rocket carrying four astronauts – two Americans, a Russian and an Emirati – took off Thursday March 2 from the NASA Kennedy space center, In Florida, to reach the international space station (ISS).
“The launch of #Crew6 took place on March 2 at 0 h 34 [6 h 34, Paris time], illuminating the sky while the crew heads for the orbit on board the dragon endaavour capsule From @Spacex, “said the American space agency On Twitter .
Liftoff! Dragon Takes Flight!
#Crew6 Launched at 12:34 am and (0534 UTC) March 2, lighting up the skies as the crew… https://t.co/0vcoAXUSBD OF /twitter.com/nasa/status/1631166750275280897 “data-datetime =” “>
The dragon capsule in which the four passengers travel must be moving on Friday at ISS 7:17 am after a journey of just over twenty-four hours. Astronauts will stay in the station for about six months. 2>
Detty of takeoff
Monday, takeoff had been canceled at the last minute due to a technical problem. NASA explained Wednesday that the problem concerned the routing of a liquid used to switch the engines, caused by a “blocked filter”, which was replaced.
The crew, called “Crew-6”, is composed of the astronauts of NASA Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, the astronaut Émirati Sultan al-Neyadi and the Russian astronaut Andreï Fediaev. Sultan al-Neyadi, 41, will become the fourth astronaut of an Arab country in history and the second Emirati, but the first in his country to spend six months in space.
Even if the tensions between Washington and Moscow are at the highest year after the Russian offensive in Ukraine, the two countries have maintained an exchange program allowing Russians to travel with SpaceX, and Americans to travel to edge of Russian Soyuz rockets. The international space station is one of the rare fields of cooperation still underway between the two countries.
CREW-6 will replace the four members of Crew-5 (two Americans, a Russian and a Japanese) arrived in October 2022 and who will descend on the ground on their own SpaceX vessel, after a few days of handover. Three other passengers (two Russians and an American) are also on board the space station, who arrived with a Soyuz vessel. The ISS will therefore welcome for a few days no less than eleven people.