Crew docks at ISS after flight honouring Gagarin
ALMATY (Kazakhstan): A threeman crew docked at the international Space Station yesterday after a flight honouring the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space.
A Soyuz capsule carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and National Aeronautics and Space Agency astronaut Mark Vande Hei docked at 1105 GMT, footage broadcasted by Nasa TV showed.
The launch came just ahead of Monday’s anniversary of Gagarin's historic flight on April 12, 1961.
Reminders of his achievement were everywhere at the Russiaoperated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as Novitsky, Dubrov and Vande Hei prepared for their half-year mission aboard the orbital lab.
The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft that the trio took off in has been named after the legendary cosmonaut and Gagarin’s portrait has been added to its exterior.
Gagarin also came up more than once in the traditional preflight press conference on Thursday, where the crew was asked
how they planned to mark the anniversary once in space.
“We’ll celebrate it together,” said 43-year-old Dubrov, who is flying to space for the first time.
Friday’s blast-off was from a different launchpad than the one used for Gagarin’s one and only mission, which saw him spend 108 minutes in orbit.
Last used in 2019, the Gagarin launchpad is undergoing upgrades in preparation for a new generation of Soyuz rockets and expected to return to action in 2023.