At 9:54 am ET (9:54 pm Beijing time) US astronaut Frank Rubio and astronauts of the Russian Space Agency, Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petrien were successfully launched from the Baikonur Space Launch Site in Kazakhstan. Three astronauts will spend six months at International Space Station . This is the first time Rubio and Petrien's space station work, and Prokopiev is entering space for the second time! After about three hours of flight, Soyuz will dock with the International Space Station at 1:11 pm, and the hatch between Soyuz and the space station will open after docking.
Three astronauts
Baikonur Space Launch Site
More than a week later, three other astronauts will return to Earth on the Soyuz spacecraft . They are commanders Oleg Aldemiyev, flight engineers Dennis Matviev and Sergei Kosakov, who have been working at the International Space Station since March 18, and they will end their six-month space life. Although the relationship between Moscow and Washington is on the verge of collapse on the Ukrainian issue, they seem to need help each other in space station cooperation. This is the first time that American astronauts have taken a Russian spacecraft to the International Space Station since the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Where will the cooperation on the International Space Station go in the future? Let's wait and see!
