Crew members attend a send-off ceremony before the launch of a Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday. MAXIM SHIPENKOV VIA REUTERS
WASHINGTON — Russia sent two cosmonauts and a United States astronaut to the International Space Station, or ISS, on Tuesday from Kazakhstan, resuming crewed flights from a recently repaired launchpad with a rare joint attendance by the heads of NASA and Russia's space agency.
US astronaut Anil Menon and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Russia's Soyuz MS-29 spacecraft on Tuesday, bound for the ISS, where they will spend about eight months as the station's 75th rotation crew.
The crew arrived at the American football field-sized space laboratory just over three hours later as they orbited over the Mediterranean Sea, joining three Americans, two Europeans and two Russians already aboard.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman traveled to Baikonur to meet Roscosmos Director Dmitry Bakanov and watch the launch, the first visit to Russia's launchpad by a NASA chief since 2018. Tensions over the Russia-Ukraine conflict had largely prevented Bill Nelson, former US president Joe Biden's NASA chief, from such visits.
