A four-member multinational crew of astronauts took off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, bound for the International Space Station (ISS) on SpaceX's Dragon capsule. The Crew-11 mission, which comprises two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut, and a Japanese astronaut, lifted off at 11:43 a.m. ET after weather delays. The crew should arrive at the ISS early on Saturday morning, about 16 hours after liftoff.
This mission might be a break from NASA's timeline. Although astronaut rotations run six months on average, NASA will start stretching future stays to eight months. The Crew-11 astronauts might be the first to try out this new schedule, which is intended to coordinate better with Russia's ISS schedules. The ultimate call on extending the stay will come based on how well the Dragon capsule holds up while docked during the next few months.
Thursday's initial launch attempt was aborted because of poor weather. Curiously, it also brought a high-profile Russian visitor to Florida - Roscosmos head Dmitry Bakanov. While it's not known if they lingered for Friday's successful launch, their trip did feature the first face-to-face meeting between the leaders of NASA and Roscosmos since 2018. Talks apparently included ongoing ISS partnership and missions to the moon, though no new deals were struck.
This gathering is set against the wider context of strained US-Russia relations since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Although space cooperation through the ISS has held firm, Russia has since moved away from collaborating with NASA's Artemis moon program, choosing instead to co-operate on a competing lunar mission with China.
The Crew-11 crew consists of NASA astronauts Mike Fincke and Zena Cardman, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui. Not only does their mission reflect ongoing global collaboration in space, but it also paves the way for long-duration space travel and more complicated coordination among global space agencies no matter how tense politics here on Earth become.
