Three Russian cosmonauts blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, and then caught up with the International Space Station after a two-orbit rendezvous and moved in for docking at a newly arrived Russian module.
The cosmonauts are replacing three crew members — two Russians and an American — who are heading home at the end of the month to close out a record-setting flight.
The docking, confirmed at 19:13 GMT, took place while the Soyuz and space station were flying about 420km (250 miles) over eastern Kazakhstan, according to NASA.
Soyuz commander Oleg Artemyev led the team, joined by two spaceflight rookies, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov, on a science mission set to last 6.5 months.
Russia has launched many Soyuz vehicles to the space station over the years, but Friday's mission is hardly commonplace. It will be the first launch that Russia has conducted since it invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, an action that has frayed many of Russia's space partnerships.
The United States and other countries imposed new economic sanctions on Russia after the invasion, some of which affect the nation's space program. As a result, Russia's federal space agency, Roscosmos, stopped selling Russian rocket engines to American companies and halted Soyuz launches from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, among other measures.
Despite the rising tensions, NASA officials stress that International Space Station operations are continuing as usual. Russia is a key partner in the space station program, and its cooperation continues to be essential, U.S. officials say.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Friday morning he's hopeful the U.S. and Russia will continue their decades-long cooperation in space that extends back to the Cold War. But he said the agency is working on contingency plans just in case.
"We have our problems with President Putin on Earth," Nelson said in an interview with CBS News. "Thank goodness we've seen Europe come together and a strengthening of NATO as we've never seen before.
The war in Ukraine has resulted in cancelled spacecraft launches and broken contracts, and Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin has warned that the US would have to use “broomsticks” to fly into space after Russia said it would stop supplying rocket engines to US companies.
Many worry that Rogozin is putting decades of a peaceful off-planet partnership at risk, most notably at the International Space Station.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson played down Rogozin’s comments, telling The Associated Press news agency: “That’s just Dmitry Rogozin. He spouts off every now and then. But at the end of the day, he’s worked with us.
“The other people that work in the Russian civilian space programme, they’re professional. They don’t miss a beat with us, American astronauts and American mission control.”
