American astronaut Frank Rubio is heading to the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday in a speedy journey that can take simply three-and-a-half hours.

In his first journey to house, the California-born astronaut will blast off on a Russian Soyuz 2.1a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Rubio will journey to orbit aboard the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft alongside Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin.

The experience to the house station will take slightly longer than the present quickest journey from Earth to the ISS, which took simply three hours and three minutes in an October 2020 mission that additionally concerned a Soyuz spacecraft.

As a part of the Expedition 68 crew, Rubio, Prokopyev, and Petelin will spend the subsequent six months dwelling and dealing aboard the orbital outpost some 250 miles above Earth.

Speaking with reporters final month, Rubio mentioned that regardless of worldwide tensions brought on by Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, he hadn’t seen any points with NASA’s Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, including that he was additionally getting alongside nicely together with his two journey companions.

The NASA astronaut mentioned the mission “represents the ongoing effort of tremendous teams on both sides and amazing people that make this happen,” including, “I think it’s important that, when we’re at moments of possible tension elsewhere, human spaceflight and exploration, something that both agencies are incredibly passionate about, remains a form of diplomacy and partnership where we can find common ground and keep achieving great things together.”

How to look at

You can watch a livestream of the elevate off and the early phases of the flight by way of the video participant embedded on the prime of this web page, or by visiting NASA’s web site, which can carry the identical feed. Coverage will start at 9 a.m. ET.

NASA will share a livestream of the Soyuz spacecraft docking with the house station about three-and-a-half hours after launch. You may also watch this utilizing the identical video participant.

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