Who are the 3 newest astronauts in space?
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Staff writer
3... 2...1... And we have liftoff!
Three new astronauts are now aboard the International Space Station (ISS), a mere six hours after taking off from Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz space capsule. The new crew will be in space until late December 2015, and will 鈥渟upport several hundred experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science, and Earth science,鈥� according to a .听
鈥淲eird to be leaving in a long trip and leave all our luggage behind,鈥� a couple hours before takeoff. Wednesday鈥檚 launch was supposed to have left Earth two months ago, but was postponed after , an unmanned Russian cargo spaceship designed to resupply the ISS, spun out of control, becoming a $50.5 million piece of space junk in April.听
Kjell Lindgren of NASA, Oleg Kononenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), and Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are the three new crew members joining the ISS. This is the first time aboard the space station for Mr. Lindgren and Mr. Yiu, and the third time for Mr. Kononenko,聽.听
International cooperation on space exploration has increased dramatically since the mid-20th century when Cold War frigidity marked the relations between the two space powers at the time, the United States and the Soviet Union. The first rocket launched into space was聽, shot off Cape Canaveral, Fla. in 1950 by the United States. Seven years later the USSR launched Sputnik I and Sputnik II, the first satellites in Earth鈥檚 orbit. In April, 1961 the , a crushing defeat at the time to the United States, which was planning a manned mission for the following month.听
"Now let the other countries try to catch us," said Soviet's Gagarin Korolyov, after returning from his聽, becoming the聽first man in space. Russian success prompted an immediate reaction from the United States; in May, 1961 President John F. Kennedy held an saying, 鈥淭his nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth,鈥� a goal which the US accomplished in . 聽
In 2000, the first astronauts lived and worked on the ISS;聽聽members Bill Shepherd (US), Yuri Gidzenko (Russia), and Sergei Krikalev (Russia) comprised the crew.听Today, . Even in nationally conducted space missions, international acknowledgements are extended 鈥� NASA鈥檚 current New Horizon鈥檚 mission informally ,' after Earth鈥檚 first artificial satellite operated by the Russians in the 1960s.听
"It's a pretty amazing time if you think about it," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's space operations chief, speaking before the Discovery rocket launched for the ISS in 2011. "To think of all these international control stations working together 鈥� it's an amazing system of operations and systems to keep all the bits moving forward. What a great time in spaceflight."
