UNITED STATES: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday. Two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut, and the second Emirati to travel to space were aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
According to a livestream of the launch, the SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 mission lifted off at 12:34 am (05:34 GMT) on Thursday from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Due to a blockage in a filter that provides the ignition fluid needed to activate the rocket engines, the launch on Monday had to be scrubbed just before liftoff.
The tweet from the US space agency said the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour launched on Thursday, “lighting up the skies as the crew heads to orbit.”
Endeavour, the Dragon crew capsule, is slated to arrive at the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday at 1:17 am (06:17 GMT) following a 24-hour journey.
Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg from NASA, Andrey Fedyaev from Russia, Sultan al-Neyadi from the United Arab Emirates, and others will spend six months on the space station.
The second astronaut from the oil-rich United Arab Emirates and the fourth astronaut from an Arab country, Neyadi, 41, will launch into space after his colleague Hazzaa al-Mansoori, who performed an eight-day mission in 2019.
The maiden space flights of Neyadi, Hoburg, the Endeavour pilot, and Fedyaev, the Russian mission specialist, are all scheduled for the mission.
Fedyaev is the second Russian astronaut to travel to the ISS aboard a SpaceX rocket. NASA astronauts are routinely transported to the space station by Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Since the Russian advance in Ukraine pitted Moscow and Washington squarely against one another, space has remained a rare area of collaboration between them.
Political discussions are seldom in orbit, according to Bowen, a veteran of three space shuttle missions.
“All of us are experts. We remain committed to completing the objective. Once we arrive in space, our experience with cosmonauts has always been wonderful,” he stated.
Also Read: NASA Astronaut Shares Stunning View of Aurora from Space
