A team of four people, including a Russian, launched by NASA and Spacex is on the road this Friday, August 1 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 am local time (5:43 am French time) of 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 launch.
The eleventh mission of American crew
The crew dragon capsule that must be transported to the crew, called “Endeavour” and placed at the top of the rocket, has already been used for four previous missions of the NASA, as well as a private mission.
The four passengers are this time the members of the crew-11, the eleventh regular rotation mission of the US crew in the ISS provided by Spacex for NASA.
The NASA and the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos, which operate together within the ISS, have established an astronaut exchange program, each enrupia a member of the crew of the other country.
During its six-month mission, the-11 crew will simulate scenarios of everything that could occur near the South Lunar Pole in the framework of the Artemis program directed by the United States to return to the Moon.
They will also prove the effects of gravity on the ability of astronauts for pilot spacecraft, including the future Landing Lunar.
The crew-11 is also maintained at the edge of the fruit, the grenades of Armenia, which will be compared with a control lot that remained on earth to study the influence of microgravity on crop growth.
An essential test bench for research
In constantly inhabited since 2000, the flight laboratory that is the ISS serves as an essential test bench for research on space exploration, particularly with respect to any mission to Mars.
The international cooperation model that brings together Europe, Japan, the United States and Russia, the ISS began to meet 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 with his American counterpart since 2018.
After the deterioration of Russian-American relations due to the war in Ukraine, Russia had threatened to withdraw prematurely from cooperation with respect to ISS.
On Thursday, Dmitry Bakanov confirmed that his country was determined to continue the exploitation of ISS until 2028, and work in their orbit until 2030, which made the International Space Station one of the very rare cooperation subjects between Washington and Moscow.
Source: BFM TV
