A crew of four people launched by NASA and SpaceX is heading to the International Space Station (ISS) this Friday, where they will stay for about six months.
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Americans Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese Kimiya Yui, and Russian Oleg Platonov took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.
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“It is an honor, a privilege, and a choice for us to be part of something that transcends humanity,” Cardman declared shortly before the launch.
The Crew Dragon capsule carrying the crew, named Endeavour and located on top of the rocket, has already been used in four NASA missions, as well as in a private mission.
Space cooperation between the United States and Russia continues
The four crew members are members of Crew 11, the eleventh regular crew rotation mission of the American crew to the ISS, carried out by SpaceX for NASA.
The American agency and its Russian counterpart Roscosmos, which operate jointly on the ISS, have an astronaut exchange program where each will take turns to transport a crew member from the other country.
During their mission, Crew 11 will simulate lunar landing scenarios that could occur near the south pole, as part of the Artemis program, led by the United States, to return to the Moon, among other tasks.
Inhabited since 2000, the ISS serves as a testbed for space exploration research, particularly regarding possible missions to Mars.