A Soyuz-2.1a rocket lifts off July 14 carrying the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
WASHINGTON — A new crew arrived at the International Space Station on July 14 on a launch witnessed in person by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.
A Soyuz-2.1a rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:47 a.m. Eastern, placing the Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft into orbit. The spacecraft docked with the station’s Prichal module just over three hours later.
The spacecraft delivered Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina and NASA astronaut Anil Menon to the station, where they will spend the next eight months. It is the second flight to the ISS for Dubrov and Kikina and the first for Menon.
Among those attending the launch in Baikonur was Isaacman. He is the first NASA administrator to attend a launch there since October 2018, when then-Administrator Jim Bridenstine attended the Soyuz MS-10 launch, which suffered an in-flight abort but landed safely downrange of the launch site.
