The Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday morning with NASA astronaut Kate Rubins aboard, bound for the International Space Station (ISS).
Why it matters: Per Axios' Miriam Kramer, this marks the last contracted flight on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft for NASA, marking the transition to using U.S. launch providers like SpaceX instead.
Liftoff! 🚀 The Soyuz spacecraft carrying Kate Rubins of @NASA_Astronauts and Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos on a two-orbit, three-hour journey to the @Space_Station launched at 1:45am EDT. pic.twitter.com/40Qr8ByJQx
— NASA (@NASA) October 14, 2020
Of note: The launch comes ahead of the 20th anniversary of the arrival of the first crew on the ISS, on Nov. 2, 2000.
- The $100 billion ISS has since been continuously occupied by rotating crews of astronauts from the U.S., Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan.
What they're saying: It's "incredible that we've had a space station with continuous human presence for 20 years," said Rubins ahead of her second trip to the ISS — which fell on her birthday — per CBS News.
- "It's one of the most incredible engineering achievements, I think, that humanity has done," she added. "And the fact that we've done it as an international partnership and a collaboration, I think that's absolutely the intangible benefit of all of this."
Flashback: SpaceX launches NASA astronauts to orbit in historic first
