Two rookie astronauts, cosmonaut blast off to space station

The space travellers will join Russia's Alexander Misurkin and NASA pair Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba currently aboard the ISS.

Russia's Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft carrying members of the International Space Station (ISS) expedition 54/55 blasts off to the ISS from the launch pad at the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome on December 17, 2017.
AFP

Russia's Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft carrying members of the International Space Station (ISS) expedition 54/55 blasts off to the ISS from the launch pad at the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome on December 17, 2017.

A trio of US and Japanese astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut blasted off from Kazakhstan on Sunday for a two-day trip to the International Space Station, a NASA TV broadcast showed.

Commander Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and flight engineers Norishige Kanai of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Scott Tingle of NASA lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 0721 GMT.

The crew will gradually approach the station, which orbits about 400 km above Earth, for two days before docking.

Reuters

Members of the International Space Station expedition 54/55, Anton Shkaplerov (C), Scott Tingle (R) and Norishige Kanai (L) during the send-off ceremony after checking their space suits before the launch of the Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft at the Baikonur cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, on 17 December 2017.

Shkaplerov, Kanai and Tingle will join Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos and Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba of NASA, who have been aboard the orbital outpost since September.

Onboard cameras showed crew members making thumbs-up gestures after the blast-off. Also visible was a stuffed dog toy chosen by Shkaplerov's daughter to be the spacecraft's zero-gravity indicator.

Soyuz was safely in orbit about 10 minutes after the launch. 

AFP

Members of the International Space Station (ISS) expedition 53/54 climb a ladder to the rocket at the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early on December 17, 2017.

Shkaperov, the former Russian military pilot, has spent exactly a year in space over two missions and will mark his birthday in orbit for the third time in February next year.

He told journalists at a pre-flight press conference on Saturday that he intends to vote from space in Russia's March presidential election, which incumbent Vladimir Putin is widely expected to win.

"We (cosmonauts) like all conscientious citizens of Russia, participate in the presidential elections," he said.

Kanai is the youngest astronaut in the history of the Japanese space agency, and the last of a trio of Japanese astronauts who were certified for travel to the ISS back in 2011.

US Navy captain Tingle is a graduate of Purdue University in Indiana, which also counts space legend Neil Armstrong among its alumni.

The ISS laboratory, a rare example of American and Russian cooperation, has been orbiting Earth at about 28,000 kilometres per hour since 1998.

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