The Soyuz MS-24 aircraft carrying American astronaut Loral O'Hara and two Russian cosmonauts blasted off for a mission on the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientist O'Hara and two Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub lifted off at 8:44 pm (local time). While O'Hara will spend six months at the station, the two Russian cosmonauts will spend a year there.
This is a joint US-Russia mission in space despite hostilities between the countries reaching an all-time high over the ongoing Ukraine conflict.
About the space mission
This will be the first time O'Hara and Chub will fly out to space while Kononenko has already made four trips. They arrived at the ISS after a three-hour flight. They were scheduled to fly to ISS last year, but their original capsule was launched without any personnel as a replacement for a group of astronauts stuck at the station.
The previous crew also comprises an American and two Russian astronauts - will use the replacement capsule to go home on September 27.after their Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft developed coolant leaks while parked at the station - extending their stay from six months to a year.
As a result, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio - a member of the Soyuz MS-22 crew - broke the US record for the most consecutive days in orbit and his return home will mark 371 days in space, CNN reported.
Additionally, after the completion of the current trip, Kononenko will hold the record for the person spending the longest amount of time in space at over a thousand days. Under his command, the group will take over operations from the previous group.
Loral O’Hara is a former research engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts who was selected to the NASA astronaut corps in 2017.
(with AP inputs)
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