Three Russian cosmonauts were due for launch on Friday to the International Space Station (ISS), continuing a two-decade-plus shared Russian-US presence aboard the orbiting outpost despite heightened terrestrial tensions between Moscow and Washington.
The Soyuz spacecraft carrying the new cosmonaut team was set for lift-off at 1555 GMT (11:55 a.m. Eastern time) from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to begin a three-hour-plus ride to the space station.
Soyuz commander Oleg Artemyev will lead the team, joined by two spaceflight rookies, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov, on a science mission aboard ISS set to last six and half months.
They will join the station’s current seven-member crew to replace three who are scheduled to fly back to Earth on March 30 — cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov and US NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei.
Vande Hei will have logged a NASA record-breaking 355 days in orbit by the time he returns to Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz capsule with his two cosmonaut peers.
Remaining aboard the ISS with the newcomers until the next rotation a couple months later are three NASA astronauts — Tom Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron — and German crewmate Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency.
Those four crew members arrived together in November aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a six-month stint in orbit.
Launched in 1998, the research platform orbiting some 400 kilometers above Earth has been continuously occupied since November 2000 while operated by a US-Russian-led partnership including Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.
The latest change in ISS personnel comes as the durability of longstanding US-Russian collaboration in space is tested by heightened antagonism between the two former Cold War adversaries over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
As part of US economic sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government last month, US President Joe Biden ordered high-tech export restrictions against Moscow that he said were designed to “degrade” Russia’s aerospace industry, including its space program.
Dmitry Rogozin, director-general of Russian space agency Roscosmos, immediately lashed out in a series of tweets suggesting the US sanctions could “destroy” ISS teamwork and lead to the space station itself falling out of orbit.
A week later, Rogozin retaliated by announcing Russia would stop supplying or servicing Russian-made rocket engines used by two US aerospace NASA suppliers, suggesting US astronauts could use “broomsticks” to get to orbit.
At about the same time, Moscow said it had ceased joint ISS research with Germany and forced the 11th-hour cancelation of a British satellite launch from Baikonur.
The Roscosmos chief also said last month that Russia was suspending its cooperation with European launch operations at the European Spaceport in French Guiana.
The ISS itself was born in part from a foreign policy initiative to improve US-Russian relations following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold War hostility that spurred the original US-Soviet space race.
But Rogozin’s recent actions have prompted some in the US space industry to rethink the NASA-Roscosmos partnership.
Ann Kapusta, executive director of nonprofit space advocacy group the Space Frontier Foundation, said in a recent statement that the United States should end its ISS collaboration with Russia.
Kapusta, a onetime ISS research operations lead for NASA, said “toxic behavior” by Rogozin “shows there is no distance between Roscosmos and Putin’s war machine,” and that Russia can no longer be trusted to safely cooperate in space.
NASA officials, for their part, insist that US and Russian ISS crew, while aware of events on Earth, were still working together professionally and that geopolitical tensions had not infected the space station.
Addressing the US space agency’s 60,000 employees in a video “town hall” on Monday, NASA chief Bill Nelson said: “NASA continues working with all our international partners, including State Space Corporation Roscosmos, for the ongoing safe operations” of the space station.
NASA this week posted a fact sheet outlining the technical interdependency of the US and Russian segments of the space station.
For example, while US gyroscopes provide day-to-day control over ISS orientation in space and US solar arrays augment power supplies to the Russian module, Russia provides the propulsion used to keep the station in orbit.
Russian cosmonauts set for Friday launch to International Space Station
https://arab.news/47x7c
Russian cosmonauts set for Friday launch to International Space Station
- Soyuz spacecraft carrying the new cosmonaut team set for lift-off at 1555 GMT
- Soyuz commander Oleg Artemyev will lead the team, joined by two spaceflight rookies
Harris, Trump to rally voters in key state on same day
- Kamala Harris finds herself on eggshells as she upholds President Joe Biden’s support for key ally Israel
- While Muslim and Arab American voters have voiced outrage over the death toll in Gaza
The killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar drew optimism from Vice President Harris for a Gaza ceasefire, but Israel quickly said his death is not the end of over a year of war.
Harris has found herself on eggshells as she upholds President Joe Biden’s support for key ally Israel, while Muslim and Arab American voters have voiced outrage over the death toll in Gaza.
One of those voters in the extremely close race, 51-year-old Marwan Faraj, said he supported Biden but won’t cast a ballot for Harris because of her backing for Israel.
“They have been supporting this ethnic cleansing and genocide since day one, with our tax dollars, and that’s wrong,” said Faraj, who emigrated from Lebanon, referring to Biden and Harris.
The vice president, who replaced Biden on short notice in the race just three months ago, is holding a series of campaign events in Michigan on Friday to try to convince voters to back her.
“This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza,” Harris said in reaction to Sinwar’s death, “and it must end such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends.”
The Uncommitted movement, a pro-Palestinian group, stopped short of explicitly endorsing Harris earlier this month, but warned “it can get worse” under Trump.
One of the group’s co-founders, Lexi Zeidan, said voters should consider “the better antiwar approach” rather than “who is the better candidate.”
However, Abandon Harris, another group of anti-war voters, has endorsed fringe Green Party candidate Jill Stein, potentially turning her into a spoiler that would help elect Trump in swing states decided by just a few thousand votes.
Harris’s rival in the November 5 election, former president Trump, has yet to react to Sinwar’s killing but has expressed support for the Israeli campaign in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
The Republican candidate will also be in Michigan on Friday, for a major campaign rally in auto industry capital Detroit.
According to his campaign team, this will be an opportunity to detail how Michigan families have been hit by inflation under Biden and Harris’s leadership.
The economy, immigration and abortion are among the most hotly debated issues in a particularly tense and close election.
The candidates are racing toward election day with the Democratic vice president narrowly leading her Republican rival nationally and in several crucial swing states, although most polls are within the margin of error.
Harris’s momentum in the polls has plateaued in recent weeks, however, and both candidates have been on a blitz of new and traditional media as they try to win over the small number of undecided voters.
China’s President Xi to attend BRICS summit in Russia
BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, from Oct. 22 to 24, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Friday.
During his visit, Xi will attend the leaders’ meeting, the expert leaders’ dialogues and other activities, and have in-depth exchanges with leaders on the current international situation, Mao Ning, a ministry spokesperson, said at a regular news conference.
China is ready to work with all parties to promote BRICS cooperation, to usher in a new era of unity and self-reliance in the Global South, and jointly promote peace and development in the world, Mao said.
Floods cause damage, power outages in southeast France after heavy rainfall
- France’s weather authority Meteo France placed six departments south of the city of Lyon on a red flood alert
PARIS: Massive floods caused serious damage and power outages on Friday in parts of France’s mountainous southeast region after days of heavy rain, though there were no immediate reports of any casualties.
France’s weather authority Meteo France placed six departments south of the city of Lyon on a red flood alert on Thursday. The alert was downgraded to ‘orange’ on Friday, indicating that water levels would come down again.
“At certain places in the Ardeche region, up to 700 milimeters of water has fallen in 48 hours. That’s more than a year’s rainfall in Paris, so it’s absolutely gigantic,” Agnes Pannier-Runacher, the environment minister, told BFM TV.
French news stations showed cars, traffic signs and cattle being swept away by the floods. The A47 highway close to Lyon was temporarily transformed into a giant stream of water.
The French interior ministry said Paris had dispatched 1,500 additional firefighters to the affected areas.
Biden to discuss Ukraine with allies on swansong Berlin trip
BERLIN: US President Joe Biden will seek on Friday to cement cooperation with key European partners on issues from the Ukraine war to conflict in the Middle East during a swift swansong trip to Berlin.
“We’re wheels down in Berlin,” Biden wrote in a post on X overnight. “Ready to greet old friends and strengthen our close alliance as we stand together for freedom and against tyranny around the world.”
Biden, who sought to improve ties with Europe after the 2017-2021 presidency of Donald Trump, will be greeted with military honors before receiving Germany’s highest order of merit from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The distinction honors the 81-year-old’s “contributions to both the German-American friendship and the transatlantic bond” in all the offices he has held over the last five decades, according to the German presidential office.
Biden’s overnight trip comes just weeks before the US presidential vote, during which Republican nominee Trump is seeking re-election in a dead heat race against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate.
Biden, who dropped out of the race in July in favor of Harris, is due before lunch to hold closed-door talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the late morning on security, trade and other economic issues.
Later British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron will jet into Berlin to join them for talks focused largely on how to end the fighting in Ukraine as Russian forces advance in the east and a bleak winter of power cuts looms.
“The key question is the nature of security guarantees and so that’s what we will talk about tomorrow,” Macron told reporters on Thursday.
US election looming
Next month’s US presidential election is adding to the sense of urgency about Ukraine given Trump has signaled he would be much more reluctant to continue to support Kyiv.
That Biden is paying what could be his last visit to Europe as president to Berlin is testament to the close working relationship he has with Scholz.
Biden built trust with Germany at the start of his term and looked the other way for a while on the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline project, designed to double the flow of Russian gas direct to Germany, said Sudha David-Wilp of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
That closer relationship enabled Washington to work closely with Berlin after Russia invaded Ukraine, with German spending on defense swiftly raised to meet the NATO target of 2 percent of GDP while Russian gas imports were slashed.
Berlin also played a critical role in a major prisoner swap in August between Russia and the West that saw the release of US journalist Evan Gershkovich and ex-US Marine Paul Whelan from Russian detention.
“It’s a thank-you tour but it’s also a message to say, ‘please stay the course on Ukraine no matter what happens’,” said David-Wilp.
Russia tests readiness of nuclear missile unit
- Russia has carried out a series of nuclear drills this year in what security analysts say are signals intended to deter the West from intervening more deeply in the war in Ukraine
MOSCOW: Russia is testing the combat readiness of a unit equipped with Yars intercontinental ballistic missiles in a region northwest of Moscow, news agencies quoted the defense ministry as saying on Friday.
The Yars, which can be deployed in silos or mounted on mobile launchers, has a range of up to 11,000km is capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads.
Russia has carried out a series of nuclear drills this year in what security analysts say are signals intended to deter the West from intervening more deeply in the war in Ukraine.
The latest one is taking place in the same week that NATO conducted its annual nuclear exercise and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky unveiled his “victory plan.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that Moscow had extended the list of scenarios that could prompt it to use nuclear weapons, effectively lowering the threshold for their use. Ukraine accused Moscow of nuclear blackmail.
In the latest test, a unit in the Tver region will practice moving Yars missiles in the field over distances of up to 100km under camouflage and protecting them against air attack and enemy sabotage groups, Interfax quoted the defense ministry as saying.
Russia previously conducted two rounds of exercises involving Yars missile units in July. It has also held three sets of drills this year to test preparations for the launch of tactical nuclear missiles, which have a shorter range and lower yield than intercontinental strategic rockets.
In the course of the war, Putin has issued frequent reminders that Russia has the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal, but he has insisted that it does not need to resort to nuclear weapons in order to achieve victory in Ukraine.
