Two Russians and one American have departed for a six-month stay on the International Space Station for the Soyuz MS-17 mission, the first to use a cutting-edge rendezvous scheme that will slash the journey to just three hours.
That means the trip is shorter than a standard Moscow to London flight. The three travelers took off from a launch site in Kazakhstan just before noon local time on Wednesday, riding aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. They are expected to dock at the ISS in record time under the new flight plan.
Later in the day, the Soyuz capsule carrying the space trio safely docked at the ISS. Russia’s Roscosmos agency celebrated the expedited mission’s success, uploading images that showed the spacecraft approaching the station’s port at minimal speed. “Contact and capture!” it wrote on Twitter.
The MS-17 mission made it to the ISS in record-breaking time, Roscosmos said. (RT)