International Space Station welcomes its first astronauts from India, Poland and Hungary

The archetypal astronauts successful much than 40 years from India, Poland and Hungary person arrived astatine the International Space Station, ferried determination by SpaceX connected a backstage flight

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The archetypal astronauts successful much than 40 years from India, Poland and Hungary arrived astatine the International Space Station connected Thursday, ferried determination by SpaceX connected a backstage flight.

The unit of 4 volition walk 2 weeks astatine the orbiting lab, performing dozens of experiments. They launched Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

America’s astir experienced astronaut, Peggy Whitson, is the commandant of the visiting crew. She works for Axiom Space, the Houston institution that arranged the chartered flight.

Besides Whitson, the unit includes India’s Shubhanshu Shukla, a aviator successful the Indian Air Force; Hungary’s Tibor Kapu, a mechanical engineer; and Poland’s Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, a radiation adept and 1 of the European Space Agency’s task astronauts connected impermanent formation duty.

No 1 has ever visited the International Space Station from those countries before. The clip anyone rocketed into orbit from those countries was successful the precocious 1970s and 1980s, traveling with the Soviets.

“It’s an grant to person you articulation our outpost of planetary practice and exploration," NASA's Mission Control radioed from Houston minutes aft the linkup precocious supra the North Atlantic.

The caller arrivals shared hugs and handshakes with the abstraction station's 7 full-time residents, celebrating with portion pouches sipped done straws. Six nations were represented: 4 from the U.S., 3 from Russia and 1 each from Japan, India, Poland and Hungary.

"It’s truthful large to beryllium present finally. It was a agelong quarantine," Whitson said, referring to the crew's extra-long isolation earlier liftoff to enactment healthy.

They went into quarantine connected May 25, stuck successful it arsenic their motorboat kept getting delayed. The latest postponement was for abstraction presumption leak monitoring, NASA wanted to marque definite everything was harmless pursuing repairs to a longtime leak connected the Russian broadside of the outpost.

It's the 4th Axiom-sponsored formation to the abstraction presumption since 2022. The institution is 1 of respective that are processing their ain abstraction stations owed to motorboat successful the coming years. NASA plans to wantonness the International Space Station successful 2030 aft much than 3 decades of operation, and is encouraging backstage ventures to regenerate it.

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