Three new crew members left Earth on July 6, Wednesday for the International Space Station (ISS) in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The crew launched for a two-day journey to the lab that orbits around the Earth.
The launch took place at 9:36 p.m. EDT (0136 on July 7 GMT) at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The three people aboard an upgraded Russian Soyuz rocket includes Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi, cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins.
The trio will spend their two-day journey testing the modified systems of Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft, before they finally dock the ISS on July 9, Saturday. Recently, NASA confirmed in a live TV broadcast that the crew aboard Soyuz MS-01 safely entered the orbit and is on their way to the ISS after having a lunch from clear, beautiful day in Baikonur.
Shortly after the launch of the spacecraft, Ivanishin reported to the space station saying that all the three astronauts are feeling well and the rest of the things are good on-board. The crew exchanged fist-bumps after the third stage of the rocket detached, suggesting that they were now in orbit.
The crew would stay aboard ISS for a period of 4 months as a part of orbiting outpost's Expedition 48 and 49 missions. The trio would conduct more than 250 experiments during their stay in space. The experiments belong to the field of fluid dynamics, human physiology, molecular and cellular biology and material science and physics. Some of the physics experiments would treat gravity as a variable, NASA has revealed.
While Rubins worked with Central and West African viruses before being selected as a NASA astronaut, Ivanishin was a part of the Russian Air Force before being selected by the Russian Space Agency.
