{"id":11282,"date":"2022-09-18T19:57:16","date_gmt":"2022-09-18T11:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/soyuz-rocket-rolls-out-for-launch-of-russian-american-crew-to-space-station\/"},"modified":"2022-09-18T19:57:16","modified_gmt":"2022-09-18T11:57:16","slug":"soyuz-rocket-rolls-out-for-launch-of-russian-american-crew-to-space-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/soyuz-rocket-rolls-out-for-launch-of-russian-american-crew-to-space-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Soyuz rocket rolls out for launch of Russian-American crew to space station"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Soyuz-2.1a rocket stands on its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome after rollout from its hangar Monday at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: NASA\/Bill Ingalls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ground teams at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan rolled a Soyuz rocket to its launch pad Sunday, moving a step closer to liftoff Wednesday with a team of two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut heading for the International Space Station, the first flight of a U.S. crew member on a Russian spacecraft since Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

NASA astronaut Francisco \u201cFrank\u201d Rubio will join Russian commander Sergey Prokopyev and flight engineer Dmitry Petelin for launch Wednesday at 9:54 a.m. EDT (1354 GMT) to begin a half-year on the space station. Rubio is preparing for his first flight to space after his selection to join the NASA astronaut corps in 2017.<\/p>\n

Asked what he\u2019s looking forward to most, Rubio said: \u201cThe launch itself. It\u2019s got to be pretty amazing to get on a rocket and finally launch, and then quickly after that you become weightless, and then you\u2019re going to be weightless for six months. I think that\u2019s gonna be a pretty neat experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in Los Angeles and raised in Miami by his Salvadoran mother, Rubio graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and piloted UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters on combat deployments to Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He earned a medical degree in 2010 and served as an Army doctor before becoming a NASA astronaut.<\/p>\n

Rubio, 46, is an Army lieutenant colonel with more than 650 free fall skydives to his credit. Now he\u2019s heading for orbit for a half-year expedition on the space station. Rubio said he is eager to help advance scientific research on human biology to help prepare for future crew flights to the moon and Mars. Science experiments on the space station, now staffed by astronauts and cosmonauts for nearly 22 years, is geared toward gaining knowledge for future exploration beyond low Earth orbit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings that were a huge concern initially, like bone density loss, we\u2019ve kind of figured out how to get around that a little bit through exercise and resistive training,\u201d Rubio said in a pre-launch interview. \u201cSo as we keep moving forward, I think we\u2019re going to get better and better at the other tough hurdles, radiation being one of them, how changes in blood distribution affect your heart and your vascular system.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust knowing that every day we\u2019re contributing to that knowledge base that will hopefully help humans achieve something that we could never dream of now, I think that\u2019s just a really gratifying thing,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n

Rubio is the first U.S. astronaut to launch on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft since April 2021. His flight on Russia\u2019s Soyuz MS-22 crew capsule follows the signing of a bilateral \u201cseat swap\u201d agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, earlier this summer, allowing U.S. astronauts to fly to the station on Russian spaceships and Russian cosmonauts to launch and land on SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon spacecraft.<\/p>\n

NASA paid the Russian government for Soyuz seats, either through direct payments or through commercial intermediaries, before SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon spacecraft entered service for astronaut missions in 2020. The new seat swap agreement does not include any exchange of funds between the governments, and is designed to guarantee U.S. and Russian crew members have continuous access to the space station, even if there are delays or groundings of SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon or Russia\u2019s Soyuz.<\/p>\n