An international crew of four astronauts launched towards the International Space Station (ISS) from Florida on Friday aboard a SpaceX rocket, embarking on a routine Nasa mission that could be the first of many to last a few months longer than usual.
The four-person crew — two Nasa astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and a Japanese astronaut — boarded SpaceX's Dragon capsule atop its Falcon 9 rocket at Nasa's Kennedy Space Centre and beat gloomy weather to blast off at 11.43am ET (3.43pm GMT). After an about 16-hour flight, they will arrive at the ISS at about 3am (7am GMT) on Saturday.
While normal crew rotation missions last about six months, the Crew-11 crew may be the first to settle into a new routine time of eight months, intended to better align US mission schedules with Russia's missions, Nasa said.
Over the next few months, Nasa officials will monitor the health of SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which remains docked to the ISS, before committing the mission to a full eight months.
Crew-11 comprise Nasa astronauts Zena Cardman and Michael Fincke, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui.
A previous attempt to launch on Thursday was scratched at the last minute because of bad weather.
Senior Russian space officials, including the head of Russia's space agency Dmitry Bakanov, were in Florida for the launch attempt on Thursday, but it was unclear whether they stayed in town for Friday's launch.
Their visit on Thursday included the first face-to-face meeting between the heads of Nasa and Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, since 2018. Roscosmos said Bakanov and acting Nasa administrator Sean Duffy discussed continued ISS operations and co-operation on the moon.
The space co-operation is a bright spot in otherwise largely frosty US-Russia relations since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
However, apart from ISS co-operation, Russia's invasion isolated Moscow's space programme from the West and foiled plans to co-operate on Nasa's Artemis moon programme. Russia opted to partner on China's moon programme, which rivals Artemis.
No new commitments on any space programmes were made during the brief meeting between Bakanov and Duffy, a person familiar with the discussion said.
Reuters
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