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Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying Russian cosmonaut lifts off for ISS

On board is the crew of the Crew-7 mission - Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, NASA astronaut Jasmine Mogbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Dane Andreas Mogensen and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Satoshi Furukawa

NEW YORK, August 26. /TASS/. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying the Crew-7 mission has lifted off for the International Space Station (ISS) from the Kennedy Space Center in the US state of Florida, according to a NASA broadcast.

The Crew-7 includes Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, along with NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa.

The liftoff took place at 3:27 a.m. EDT (10:37 a.m. Moscow time); the spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the ISS at 3:50 p.m. Moscow time on August 27. The Crew-7 mission was initially expected to be launched on August 15 but was postponed several times.

Borisov is the third Roscosmos cosmonaut to set off for the ISS on a Crew Dragon mission under a Russian-US seat-swap agreement. Last October, Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina arrived at the ISS on NASA’s Crew-5 mission, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev was part of the Crew-6 mission that launched to the orbital outpost in March.

On July 15, Russia’s Roscosmos State Space Agency announced the signing of a seat-swap agreement with NASA, which provided for three flights of Russian cosmonauts to the ISS on US spacecraft. Roscosmos said in the spring that the agreement had been extended to one more mission. Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin is expected to fly to the ISS on the Crew-8 mission in the first half of 2024.

The current crew on board the ISS includes Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin (TASS special correspondent on the ISS) and Andrey Fedyaev, as well as NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, and Emirati astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi.

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