{"id":117968,"date":"2021-04-09T15:23:42","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T07:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=117968"},"modified":"2021-04-09T15:23:44","modified_gmt":"2021-04-09T07:23:44","slug":"soyuz-crew-to-blast-off-and-mark-60-years-of-spaceflight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=117968","title":{"rendered":"Soyuz crew to blast off and mark 60 years of spaceflight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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ALMATY (Kazakhstan), April 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A three-man crew will blast off to the International Space Station on Friday in a capsule honouring the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reminders of Gagarin\u2019s achievement were everywhere at the Russia-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei prepared for their half-year mission aboard the orbital lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft that the trio take off in at 0742 GMT has been named after the legendary cosmonaut and Gagarin\u2019s portrait has been added to its exterior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gagarin also came up more than once in the traditional pre-flight press conference, where the crew was asked how they planned to mark Monday\u2019s anniversary once in space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll celebrate it together,\u201d said 43-year-old Dubrov, who is flying to space for the first time. \u201cAnd we\u2019ll work hard!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The anniversary of Gagarin\u2019s historic flight on April 12, 1961 is celebrated every year in Russia as Cosmonautics Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday\u2019s blast-off will be from a different launchpad than the one used for Gagarin\u2019s one and only mission, which saw him spend 108 minutes in orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last used in 2019, the Gagarin launchpad is undergoing upgrades in preparation for a new generation of Soyuz rockets and expected to return to action in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gagarin\u2019s mission was a propaganda coup for the Soviet Union and a huge win in the space race with the West, which became one of the Cold War\u2019s most exciting subplots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the anniversary comes at a difficult time for Russia\u2019s space industry, which has suffered a number of setbacks in recent times, from industry corruption scandals to an aborted take-off scuppering a manned mission in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps most importantly, Roscosmos and Baikonur last year lost their monopoly over manned ISS launches, as reusable rockets from Elon Musk\u2019s Space X delivered NASA astronauts to the station from American soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The emergence of commercial competitors has left Roscosmos with a financial headache \u2014 NASA has paid the company tens of millions of dollars per seat for astronauts sent to the ISS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russian space officials still talk up new ventures, including bringing back samples from Venus and creating a rocket capable of making 100 round trips to space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the space budget has fallen year by year as President Vladimir Putin prioritises increased military spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Space has proven a rare area of cooperation between Russia and the West amid rising geopolitical tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the ISS project, which began in 2000, is expected to be retired before the end of this decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite talk of NASA and Roscosmos heading in different directions as the space station winds down, crews have stressed the importance of good relations for continued progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we first started we were competing with each other and that was one of the reasons we were so successful at the beginning of human space flight,\u201d said Vande Hei, who poked fun at the haircut he gave himself during quarantine ahead of his second mission aboard the ISS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs time went on we realised we could achieve a bit more working together\u2026 I hope that will continue into the future.\u201d — NNN-AGENCIES
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ALMATY (Kazakhstan), April 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A three-man crew will blast off to the International Space Station on Friday in a capsule honouring the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space. Reminders of Gagarin\u2019s achievement were everywhere at the Russia-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":117970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[208,209],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117968"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/117970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}