New Russian Cosmonaut Team Arrives At International Space Station

Three Russian cosmonauts safely arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, docking their Soyuz capsule with the outpost for a mission that continues a 20-year shared Russian-U.S. presence in orbit despite tensions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The rendezvous came about three hours and 10 minutes after the Soyuz spacecraft carrying the new cosmonaut team lifted off from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

"Congratulations on the successful docking," a voice from Russia's mission control said moments later, according to an English translator speaking during a live NASA webcast of the event.

Link-up of the space vehicles, after the approaching Soyuz made two brief fly-around passes of ISS, took place as the Soyuz and space station flew some 250 miles (400 km) above eastern Kazakhstan, a NASA commentator said.

Soyuz commander Oleg Artemyev led the Soyuz team, joined by spaceflight rookies Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov on a science mission set to last 6-1/2 months.

According to NASA, Friday's Soyuz arrival marked the first time a spacecraft has docked to the station's newly added Prichal module, a spherical-shaped unit launched to ISS and attached to the Russian segment in November 2021.

NASA said it would take about two hours after docking for the crew to conduct standard leak tests and to pressurize the passageway to the space station before the three cosmonauts can open hatches to the ISS. They will then join the station's current seven-member crew to replace three who are scheduled to fly back to Earth on March 30 - cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov and U.S. astronaut Mark Vande Hei.

Vande Hei will have logged a NASA record-breaking 355 days in orbit by the time he returns to Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz capsule with his two cosmonaut colleagues.

Remaining aboard the space station with the newcomers until the next rotation a couple months later are three NASA astronauts - Tom Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron - and German crewmate Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency.

Those four crew members arrived together in November aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a six-month stint in orbit.

Launched in 1998, the research platform has been continuously occupied since November 2000 while operated by a U.S.-Russian-led partnership including Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.

COLLABORATION TESTED

The durability of U.S.-Russian collaboration in space is being tested by heightened antagonism between the two former Cold War adversaries over Russia's invasion last month of Ukraine.

As part of U.S. economic sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin's government last month, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered high-tech export restrictions against Moscow that he said were designed to "degrade" Russia's aerospace industry, including its space program.

Dmitry Rogozin, director-general of Russian space agency Roscosmos, then lashed out in a series of Twitter posts suggesting the U.S. sanctions could "destroy" ISS teamwork and lead to the space station falling out of orbit.

A week later, Rogozin announced that Russia would stop supplying or servicing Russian-made rocket engines used by two U.S. aerospace NASA suppliers, suggesting U.S. astronauts could use "broomsticks" to get to orbit.

At about the same time, Russia said it ceased joint ISS research with Germany and forced the cancellation of a British satellite launch from Baikonur.

The Roscosmos chief also said last month that Russia was suspending its cooperation with European launch operations at the European Spaceport in French Guiana.

The space station was born in part from a foreign policy initiative to improve American-Russian relations following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War hostility that spurred the original U.S.-Soviet space race.

Rogozin's recent actions have prompted some in the U.S. space industry to rethink the NASA-Roscosmos partnership.

NASA officials, for their part, have said that U.S. and Russian ISS crew members, while aware of events on Earth, were still working together professionally and that geopolitical tensions had not infected the space station.

Addressing his agency's 60,000 employees in a video "town hall" on Monday, NASA chief Bill Nelson said: "NASA continues working with all our international partners, including State Space Corporation Roscosmos, for the ongoing safe operations" of the space station.