Russian Spacecraft Arrives at International Space Station After Successful Launch

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft has arrived at the International Space Station after a successful launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. 

Aboard the spacecraft were NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Hammock Koch and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Hague and Ovchinin were originally meant to launch to the ISS in October, but their mission was aborted; an investigation showed then that the abortive launch was caused by a sensor damaged during the rocket’s assembly at the cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The new crew joins Anne McClain of NASA, David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency, and Expedition 59 Commander Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos.

According to NASA, the team will conduct 250 experiments over the next six months “in fields such as biology, Earth science, human research, physical sciences and technology development.”