K A Z A K H S TA N 3- hour trip to space station
A TRIO of astronauts launched successfully to the International Space Station for the first time using a fasttrack manoeuvre to reach the orbiting outpost in just three hours.
Nasa’s Kate Rubins along with Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud- Sverchkov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos lifted off as scheduled yesterday morning from the Russia- leased Baikonur space launch facility in Kazakhstan for a six- month stint on the station. For the first time, they tried a two- orbit approach and docked with the space station in just a little over three hours after lift- off.
They will join the station’s Nasa commander, Chris Cassidy, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, who have been aboard the complex since April and are scheduled to return to Earth in a week.
“We’re planning to try some really interesting things like bio- printing tissues and growing cells in space and continuing our work on sequencing DNA,” Rubins said.
Ryzhikov said the crew would try to find the location of a leak at the station’s Russian section.