This morning at 07:47 (Italian time) A new mission has started towards the International Space Station (ISS). The astronaut of NASA Jonny Kim has risen aboard the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft of Roscosmos (the Russian space agency), flanked by the Russian Cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky.
The launch. The trio took off by the famous Cosmodrome of Baikonur, Kazakhstana place that has seen some of the most iconic spatial missions in history. After a quick trajectory of two orbits and three hours, Soyuz is automatically attracted to the ISS Prichal module, marking the beginning of a stay that will last long.
International crew. Once on board, Kim, Ryzhikov and Zubbitsky will join a team already present on the station: the astronauts of Nasa Nichole Ayers, Anne McClain and Don Pettit, the astronaut of the Jaxa (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Takuya Onishi, and Cosmonauts of the Roscosmos Alexey Ovchinin, Kirill Peskov and Ivan Vagner.
Eight months of research. The three will spend about eight months on board the orbital laboratory as part of the Expedition 72/73, a period in which they will lead crucial scientific experiments to understand the effects of the space environment on the human bodydevelop New technologies for interplanetary travel And deepen the knowledge of the cosmos.
The ISS has been inhabited for 25 years. The International Space Station is one of the largest global collaboration projects in the history of humanity. His construction began in 1998when the first module, Zarya, was launched in space. Since then, the ISS has grown thanks to the addition of new modules from different space agencies, including NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), ESA (Europe), Jaxa (Japan) and CSA (Canada). In the 2000 then came the first resident crewinaugurating the permanent human presence in space. In 2009 the ISS reached its current configuration with the addition of important scientific modules. In 2011 with the end of the Space Shuttle program, the transport of astronauts was entrusted to Russian Soyuz and, subsequently, to Spacex commercial vehicles.
Today, The ISS orbit around the Earth about 420 kilometers of altitudecompleting a tour every 90 minutes. Inside, astronauts from all over the world lead Experiments ranging from biology to physicshelping to prepare humanity for future interplanetary journeys.
