2024-04-06 14:54:37
This content was published on April 6, 2024 – 4:54 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) An American NASA astronaut and two Russian and Belarusian cosmonauts landed safely on Earth on Saturday after a stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS), announced the Russian agency Roscosmos.
“Today (Saturday), at 10:17 a.m. Moscow time (09:17 a.m. Swiss), the descent vehicle of the Soyuz MS-24 manned spacecraft landed near the Kazakh town of Jezkazgan,” Roscosmos said in a statement.
“The deorbit (of the vessel) and its descent to Earth took place normally,” said the Russian space agency.
According to the Roscosmos press release, experienced Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky and the first Belarusian cosmonaut in history, Marina Vassilevskaya, “spent 14 days in orbit”, while American astronaut Loral O’Hara returned from a mission of 204 days.
For Ms. Vassilevskaïa and Ms. O’Hara, this was the first flight of their careers on the ISS.
In a statement released by his services, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko “congratulated the crew of the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft on its successful landing”.
Two weeks ago, the takeoff of the Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS, with Ms. Vassilevskaya and Mr. Novitsky on board, was postponed by a few days to March 23.
ISS preserved
This postponement represented a new setback for the Russian space sector, which has been struggling for years due to financing problems, corruption scandals and failures such as the loss of the Luna-25 lunar probe in August 2023.
Russian-Western cooperation in the space field has been weighed down by the Russian assault on Ukraine launched in February 2022 and the sanctions that followed. The ISS constitutes one of the rare areas of cooperation still in progress between Moscow and Washington.
But the Russian space sector is now limited by its lack of innovation, with most of its systems relying on Soviet technologies, which are generally reliable but aging.
It also faces increased competition from private companies, such as billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
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