On Monday, a Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts from Belarus, Russia, and the United States successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS). The launch was postponed from its original Thursday schedule due to the power supply.
The three astronauts, Novitsky, Vasilevskaya, and Dyson, join the ISS crew, including NASA’s O’Hara, Dominick, Barratt, and Epps, alongside Russians Kononenko, Chub, and Grebenkin. Dyson will spend six months before returning with Kononenko and Chub, concluding their year-long mission. Novitsky and Vasilevskaya, Belarus’ first astronauts, will spend 12 days before returning with O’Hara.
The failure of the MS-25’s launch on Thursday sparked doubts about the dependability of Russia’s space programme. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow has had several failures, including the loss of two Mars missions and a lunar probe in August of last year. Amid strained US-Russia relations, space remains an area of cooperation.
Russian Soyuz launches were the sole means of ferrying astronauts to the ISS for almost a decade after NASA ended its Space Shuttle programme. However, the US now relies on privately-built SpaceX rockets, breaking Russia’s monopoly on manned launches.
