NASA Astronaut, Two Russians Launch on 'Fast-Track' to Space Station

A Russian Soyuz 2.1a lifts-off with a new crew bound for the space station. (NASA)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts lifted-off from Kazakhstan on Friday on a fast trip to reach the International Space Station.

American Mark T. Vande Hei and Russian's Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov are scheduled to spend nearly six months in space.

Lift-off of the Soyuz 2.1a rocket occurred on time at 3:42:40.9 a.m. EDT (12:42 p.m. local), from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Nine minutes later, the crewed Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft arrived in an initial orbit.

The launch occurred three days shy of the 60th anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's launch. Gagarin became the first human to fly into space on April 12, 1961, using the same launch pad used by the crew today.

A retired U.S. Army Colonel, this is Vande Hei's second spaceflight. Beginning in September 2017, he served as a crew member of the Expeditions 53/54 aboard the station. He also performed four spacewalks before going home on February 28, 2018.

Two orbits later, the Soyuz MS-18 began a series of maneuvers for docking to the station's Rassvet module. Capture and contact between the two craft occurred on time at 7:05:03 a.m., 262 miles above northern China.

The three new crew members of Expedition 65 now brings the station's population to ten. In one week, NASA’s Kate Rubins and Russia's Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Ryzhikov will depart for their journey home.

(Charles A Atkeison reports on aerospace and technology. Follow his updates via social media @Military_Flight.)