Photo Credit: NASA
Hot on the heels of Expedition 49’s launch to the International Space Station in October, Expedition 50 is making their way to the ISS as well.
The crew, comprised of Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos, Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Peggy Whitson of NASA, will join Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA and cosmonauts Andrey Borisenko and Sergey Ryzhikov of Expedition 49.
The Soyuz MS-03 craft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Thursday. It’s scheduled to dock at the space station’s Rassvet module Saturday.
This expedition will research how lighting impacts the health and wellbeing of crew members and investigate how microgravity affects tissue regeneration in humans, as well as the genetic properties of space-grown plants.
Whitson will take command of Space Station in February, making her the first woman to do so twice. Her first tenure as commander was in 2007 when she became the first woman to hold the post.
Photo Credit: NASA
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