Status: 03/19/2022 09:29 am
Despite severe tensions between Russia and the West over the Ukraine war, three Russian astronauts have been jubilantly received on the International Space Station. When docking, they wore blue and yellow overalls.
In the midst of severe tensions between Russia and the West, an all-Russian crew has arrived at the International Space Station. Cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov docked with their Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft at the ISS, as shown by live images from the US space agency NASA.
The cosmonauts wore first blue and then yellow flight suits – the national colors of Ukraine. They did not say whether they associated a message with it. One of the newcomers, Oleg Artemyev, however, when asked about the yellow suits in a conversation with family members on Earth, said that each crew chooses their flight suits themselves. “We actually accumulated a lot of yellow stuff that we had to use, so that’s why we had to wear yellow,” he continued
Video images of the preparations for the docking maneuver with the ISS showed a cosmonaut still in a blue suit. All three then wore yellow suits on the ISS.
External use in space
The cosmonauts left for the ISS yesterday in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. After a little over three hours of flight, the Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft docked with the ISS. The capsule bears the name of the Soviet rocket designer Sergei Korolev, who was born in Zhytomyr in 1907. The city is now in Ukraine.
The crew of seven around the German Matthias Maurer, two other Russians and four Americans welcomed the newcomers with hugs and applause. The crew has a lot of work ahead of them over the next few weeks as maintenance work on the outer hull of the space station is pending.
At the end of March, the two cosmonauts who arrived earlier on the ISS should return to Earth with their US colleague in a Russian Soyuz space capsule. Maurer, who has been on board since November, will fly back at the end of April.
Contract could expire in 2024
Since the US and Europe have imposed sanctions on Russia in the wake of the war of aggression against Ukraine, cooperation has been severely strained. However, both sides emphasize that they want to continue operating the ISS for the time being.
However, the Russian space agency Roskosmos recently left the future of the ISS open after the contract expired in 2024. NASA is aiming for a term until 2030.
Cosmonauts arrive at the ISS space station
Torsten Teichmann, ARD Washington, March 19, 2022 at 8:35 a.m