A multinational crew made up of an American, a Russian and the first space traveller from the United Arab Emirates blasted off successfully on Wednesday for a mission on the International Space Station.
A Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off as scheduled from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
3-2-1… LIFTOFF! 🚀 At 9:57am ET, @Astro_Jessica 🇺🇸, cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka 🇷🇺 & spaceflight participant Hazzaa Ali Almansoori 🇦🇪 launched on a journey to their new home aboard the @Space_Station. Tune in: https://t.co/x0oE4sFcsu pic.twitter.com/ETKVudGbNe
— NASA (@NASA) September 25, 2019
Nasa astronaut Jessica Meir, Oleg Skripochka of Russian space agency Roscosmos, and Hazzaa Ali Almansoori from the UAE docked at the orbiting outpost six hours later.
A trio of space travelers, including @Astro_Jessica, is now safely on orbit and solar arrays have successfully deployed on their Soyuz spacecraft. Get updates about their six-hour journey to the @Space_Station: https://t.co/FRrjhIw77o pic.twitter.com/uJ5jfL1s38
— NASA (@NASA) September 25, 2019
The mission is the third spaceflight for Skripochka and the first for both Meir and Almansoori, who is on an eight-day mission under a contract between the UAE and Roscosmos.
The trio joined the crew already on the International Space Station: Russians Alexey Ovchinin and Alexander Skvortsov, Nasa astronauts Christina Koch, Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano.
Hague and Ovchinin are scheduled to wrap up a mission of more than 200 days on October 3 and return to Earth with Almansoori.
Meir and Skripochka plan to stay for more than six months.
