Soyuz Rocket

 60 years of Soyuz rocket

Soyuz is a series of spacecraft designed for the Soviet space program by the Korolev Design Bureau in the 1960s that remains in service today, having made more than 140 flights. The Soyuz spacecraft is launched on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

A three-person crew embarked for the International Space Station on Friday (April 9), launching just three days shy of the 60th anniversary of the first human spaceflight. To honor the anniversary, the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft was christened the "Yu.A. Gagarin" and bore the name on its exterior insulation.

"It is a big honor for us to fly and celebrate the anniversary of the first flight into space," said Novitskiy, addressing the Russian state commission that approved the crew's launch on Thursday.

"For me," added Dubrov, "it is a special honor to have my first flight on such an important date when we are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the first flight into space."

That the crew included an American underscored one of the key advancements made since Gagarin's one-orbit Vostok mission, said Vande Hei.

"Of course, when we started, we were competing with each other and that was one of the reasons we were so successful at the beginning of human spaceflight," he said. "As time went on, we realized that by working together we could achieve even more, and that continues today, and I hope will continue into the future."

At present, Vande Hei is the last U.S. astronaut scheduled to fly on a Russian Soyuz, after 26 years of joint missions. Vande Hei's place on the Soyuz MS-18 mission came as the result of barter between NASA, the U.S. space services company Axiom Space and Roscosmos.