US astronaut Anil Menon and two Russian cosmonauts launched on Soyuz MS-29 for an eight-month mission to the International Space Station.
BY Mahnoor | 15-07-2026
On Tuesday, Russia sent two cosmonauts and an American astronaut to the International Space Station from Kazakhstan. This restarted crewed flights from a fixed launchpad. The heads of NASA and Russia’s space agency both came for this rare event.
US astronaut Anil Menon and cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina took off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Russia’s Soyuz MS-29 spaceship at 10:47am EDT (1447 GMT). They are going to the International Space Station (ISS) to be the 75th crew and will stay there for about eight months.
The team got to the big space lab, as big as a football field, a little over three hours later while flying over the Mediterranean Sea. They joined three Americans, two Europeans, and two Russians who were already there.
NASA boss Jared Isaacman went to Baikonur to meet Roscosmos boss Dmitry Bakanov and watch the launch. This was the first visit to Russia’s launch site by a NASA chief since 2018. Problems from the Russia-Ukraine war mostly stopped Bill Nelson, who was NASA boss under former President Joe Biden, from making such visits.
The Expedition 75 mission was the first spaceflight for Menon, who is 49. Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut, flew on a SpaceX capsule in 2024 with Menon’s wife, SpaceX engineer Anna Menon, who is also 49, and two others during the Polaris Dawn mission. This was a private spacewalking trip paid for by Isaacman.
“Anil has spent his whole life getting ready for this moment,” Isaacman wrote on X after the launch. “He is a student, soldier, doctor, pilot, husband, dad, and will surely be one of the best American space travelers.”
This is the second space trip for both Dubrov, 48, and Kikina, 41. Kikina is the only woman among Russia’s 23 active astronauts. She was the first Russian to fly on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to the space station in October 2022. That mission started new joint U.S.-Russian astronaut flights.
The ISS cooperation is still going on
The ISS, which is 27 years old, is a joint project between NASA (US space agency) and Roscosmos (Russia’s space agency). They have worked together despite many years of tension between the two countries, including Russia’s war in Ukraine. They mostly keep working together because they need each other’s technology. US solar panels give power to the whole ISS, while Russian thrusters help keep the station in the right orbit.
Both countries also see the ISS as important for keeping their human spaceflight programs going, even though Earth’s orbit is becoming more militarized, which creates new conflicts between the US and Russia.
Air leaks on the old ISS have strained ties between NASA and Roscosmos, with the two groups sometimes disagreeing on how to find and repair the cause of the leaks.
A cosmonaut on the station planned to use a saw to open a room thought to have the leak’s source, which worried NASA officials.
The station’s health, set to retire soon after 2030, was probably discussed in Isaacman’s talks with Russian space officials. Roscosmos posted a video on Telegram showing Isaacman talking with Bakanov, with senior Roscosmos officials nearby.
NASA and Roscosmos didn’t answer questions about the meeting right away.
He talked with the acting NASA chief Sean Duffy at that time about the International Space Station (ISS) and working together on the moon. But the meeting didn’t lead to any deals or new projects.
The last time Russia launched a crew from Baikonur Cosmodrome’s Site 31, the rocket seriously damaged the old launchpad. This took Russia’s only place for crewed launches out of use for months while they fixed it. In March, Russia started launching again from that pad with a mission to bring supplies to the ISS without a crew.
Also watch this :
Leave a comment