SpaceX delivered another quartet of astronauts to the International Space Station on Wednesday and sent a crew including a Russian cosmonaut, part of a US-Russia partnership that has endured despite wartime tensions in Ukraine.
The SpaceX launch is the latest sign of long-lasting cooperation between Russia and the United States space partnership. The company’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off with two American astronauts, a Japanese astronaut, and a Russian cosmonaut.
The Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon spacecraft took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at noon with two NASA astronauts, Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, as well as Koichi Wakata from Japan and Anna Kikina from Russia.
NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, announced in July that they had reached an agreement that would give Russian astronauts seats on American-made spacecraft in exchange for NASA astronauts orbiting Russian Soyuz rockets.
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin also signed a decree firing Dmitry Rogozin, who has led Roscosmos, the state-owned company that oversees Russia’s space activities since 2016.
Russians and Americans in orbit maintained their close cooperation despite the severance of ties between the two countries after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February. The report also withstood Rogozin’s repeated bellicose statements in Russian media and his Twitter and Telegram accounts.
