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A trio of astronauts have reached the International Space Station in just three hours using a new fast-track maneuver.
NASA’s Kate Rubins, along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchko, took off from the Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan early Wednesday morning.
The launch used a two-orbit, three-hour approach for the first time.
Previously, it took twice as long to get to the station.
The trio successfully docked with the ISS at 4.48 a.m. ET, NASA tweeted, after launch at 1.45 a.m.
They will be joined by station commander Chris Cassady, as well as cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, who have been on board since April and are scheduled to return to Earth next week.
In a press conference before the launch, Rubins said the crew had spent weeks in quarantine at the Star City training facility outside Moscow, and then at Baikonur, to make sure they had no coronavirus.
They will spend six months on the space station, about 253 miles (408 km) above Earth.
They were launched on a Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft. Image: Roscosmos / Reuters
The mission follows the launch in early October a special food delivery to the ISS, including chocolate covered meats, cheeses, oranges, nuts and blueberries, just in time for the American holiday of Thanksgiving.
The Cygnus capsule contained more fresh food than usual, as the number of people on the space station will increase from six to seven with SpaceX’s second astronaut launch later in the month.
It also included pressurized air tanks to help compensate a leak in the space station; a new $ 23 million (£ 18 million) titanium toilet designed for women and a virtual reality camera that will provide cinematic shots of spacewalks and other outdoor scenes from space.
