Russian spacecraft brings cosmonauts, astronaut to ISS

A Russian Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft has docked with the International Space Station (ISS) with two Russian cosmonauts and one astronaut from the US space agency NASA on board, Russia's Roscosmos said on Tuesday.

The three — Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritsky and Jonny Kim — are to carry out 50 scientific experiments in space before their return to Earth on December 9, Roscosmos said.

The flight to the ISS, which orbits the Earth at an average distance of around 400 kilometers (250 miles), took under four hours following the launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 10:47 a.m. (0547 GMT)

US-Russia cooperation in space

Despite tensions between Moscow and Washington in recent years over Russia's ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, space projects have remained one field where some cooperation has continued.

The return of Donald Trump to the US presidency has also brought with it a thaw in the US-Russian relationship.

Russia's space program, however, is struggling amid a long-term lack of funding and has also suffered several corruption scandals along with failures, such as the Luna-25 lunar probe project in August 2023.

The ISS, of which the first module was launched in 1998, has been continuously inhabited since 2000.

The space station, which is divided into a Russian and a US section, is the result of collaboration by five space agencies for the US, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.