Three cosmonauts have arrived at the International Space Station wearing the colors of the Ukrainian flag, more than three weeks after Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine.
The three Russians – Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsako – lifted off on a Soyuz rocket to the ISS on Friday, indicating that the country remains committed to its decades-long partnership with the United States, The Washington Post reported.
Update 1:04 p.m. EDT March 19: Russia’s space agency on Saturday rejected characterizations by western media outlets of the cosmonauts’ color coordination as a show of support for Ukraine, The Guardian reported.
“Sometimes yellow is just yellow,” Roscosmos’ press service said on its Telegram channel. “The flight suits of the new crew are made in the colors of the emblem of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, which all three cosmonauts graduated from ... To see the Ukrainian flag everywhere and in everything is crazy.”
Original report: According to the BBC, the three men were the first new ISS arrivals since Russia attacked its eastern neighbor on Feb. 24.
The cosmonauts lifted off at 11:55 a.m. EDT Friday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, orbiting the Earth twice before catching up with the ISS and docking safely just after 3 p.m., the Post reported.
“Everything is fine on board, and the group is doing great,” a Russian ground controller said on NASA television through an interpreter shortly after liftoff.
The ISS is a joint project between Russia, America, Canada, Japan and several European countries.
A few hours after docking, two sets of hatches opened, and the three cosmonauts wearing bright yellow space suits with blue accents floated into the space station, the BBC reported, noting that the standard-issue Russian spaceflight uniform is plain blue.
In a news conference live-streamed by NASA and Russian agency Roscosmos, cosmonaut Artemyev stated it was the trio’s turn “to pick a color.”
“We had accumulated a lot of yellow material so we needed to use it. That’s why we had to wear yellow,” he said
Meanwhile, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CNBC on Friday that despite the escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia as the Ukrainian invasion nears the one-month mark, Friday’s Soyuz launch demonstrated “that the Russians are still committed to the International Space Station,” the Post reported.
The new arrivals, who will replace three current crew members who are scheduled to fly back to Earth on March 30, are slated to begin a science mission on the ISS that is set to last just over six months, the BBC reported.
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