A new international crew of four, including a Russian, is heading to the ISS

A crew of four people, including a Russian, launched by NASA and SpaceX is en route this Friday, August 1, to the International Space Station (ISS), where they will stay for approximately six months.

The two American astronauts, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, the Japanese Kimiya Yui and the Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov took off at 11:43 local time (5:43 French time) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.

"It's an honor, a privilege, and a choice for us to be part of something that's so much bigger than humans, but it's people who make this company great," Zena Cardman said shortly before the launch.

The Crew Dragon capsule, named "Endeavour" and placed atop the rocket, which will carry the crew has already been used for four previous NASA missions, as well as one private mission.

The four passengers this time are members of Crew-11, the eleventh regular rotation mission of the American crew to the ISS carried out by SpaceX for NASA.

NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, which operate together on the ISS, have established an astronaut exchange program, each taking turns bringing a crew member from the other country.

During its six-month mission, Crew-11 will simulate lunar landing scenarios that could occur near the lunar south pole as part of the U.S.-led Artemis program to return to the Moon.

They will also test the effects of gravity on astronauts' ability to pilot spacecraft, including future lunar landers.

Crew-11 also has on board fruit, Armenian pomegranates, which will be compared to a control batch left on Earth in order to study the influence of microgravity on crop growth.

Continuously inhabited since 2000, the ISS flying laboratory serves as an essential testbed for space exploration research, particularly concerning possible missions to Mars .

A model of international cooperation bringing together Europe, Japan, the United States, and Russia, the ISS began assembly in 1998. Its retirement was scheduled for 2024, but NASA estimated that it could operate until 2030.

Dmitry Bakanov, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, spoke this week with Sean Duffy, acting NASA administrator, about the future of the station. It was the first face-to-face meeting with his American counterpart since 2018.

Following the deterioration of Russian-American relations due to the war in Ukraine, Russia had threatened to withdraw prematurely from cooperation on the ISS.

On Thursday, Dmitry Bakanov confirmed that his country remains committed to continuing to operate the ISS until 2028, and to work on its deorbit until 2030, making the International Space Station one of the very few areas of cooperation between Washington and Moscow.