Scientific cooperation stronger than geopolitical tensions. Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina and three other crew members arrived on the International Space Station on Thursday, following traveling aboard a spaceship from the American company SpaceX. A joint flight between the United States and Russia which takes on a particularly symbolic character in the midst of war in ukraine.
“We can’t wait to get to work,” said American astronaut Nicole Mann, the first Native American woman to go into space, shortly following docking the spacecraft with the Space Station (ISS). This was SpaceX’s fifth regular mission to the ISS on behalf of the Nasaand the first American mission to transport a Russian cosmonaut since 2002. In addition to Anna Kikina and Nicole Mann, the crew dubbed Crew-5 is also made up of Japanese Koichi Wakata, and American astronaut Josh Cassada.
Five months on board
The launch of the rocket SpaceX took place on Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, launching the Dragon capsule into space. This ship slowly approached the ISS on Thursday, following a long journey of regarding 30 hours.
Members of Crew-5 will spend regarding five months in this flying laboratory, some 400 kilometers above sea level. They join the seven people already on board (two Russians, four Americans and an Italian).
A few days of handover are planned with the four members of Crew-4, before they are sent back to Earth. They must land off the American coast, on a date that has yet to be specified.
Two weeks ago, an American took off for the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. This long-planned astronaut exchange program has been maintained despite the very high tensions between the United States and Russia since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Ensuring the operation of the ISS has thus become one of the very few subjects of cooperation between the two countries.
