WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) – Russia launched two cosmonauts and an American astronaut to the International Space Station on Tuesday from Kazakhstan, resuming crewed flights from a recently repaired astronaut launchpad with a rare joint attendance by the heads of NASA and Russia’s space agency.
U.S. astronaut Anil Menon and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard Russia’s Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft at 10:47 a.m. EDT (1447 GMT) bound for the ISS, where they will spend about eight months as the station’s 75th rotation crew.
The crew and their Soyuz spacecraft were placed into orbit some 10 minutes later, beginning a roughly three-hour orbital trek to the football field-sized space laboratory ahead of docking at 1:56 p.m. EDT.
The mission was watched by Roscosmos director Dmitry Bakanov and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, the first NASA chief to visit Russia’s launch site since 2018. Tensions over the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war had largely prevented Bill Nelson, President Joe Biden’s NASA chief, from such talks.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
