Iowa woman blasts off to International Space Station

Whitson, 56, a biochemist and Nasa’s former chief astronaut, is making her third trip to the station, a US$100 million (RM4.395 million) research laboratory that flies about 420 km above Earth. She’s launching from Kazakhstan with a Russian and a French astronaut. As with the first two flights in July and October, the MS-03 crew will take two days to catch up with the space station, giving Russian engineers and flight controllers time to continue tests of the upgraded systems.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m cleaning the filters”.

Pesquet, who is the first French national to be sent to the ISS by the European Space Agency since 2008, said he still “can’t believe” he’s going to be en route to the space station soon.

Whitson’s first tenure as commander of the ISS was in 2007.

As with all missions, as much time as possible will be spent on science, however education and inspiring youngsters is another core element of Proxima.

“For me, personally, I don’t think it’s that important, but it is important that we keep breaking the records, that we keep pushing further and doing more”, Whitson commented in a pre-flight interview with collectSPACE.

“I need to be seated in the cockpit and feel the vibrations of the launch”, he said.

Expedition 51/52 crew members NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos will launch in March 2017.

The crew of Nasa astronaut Peggy Whitson, Russia’s Oleg Novitskiy and France’s Thomas Pesquet lifted off as scheduled from the Russia-leased launch facility in Kazakhstan at 2.20am on Friday (2020 GMT).

“Dear Peggy, youre such a fearless woman who has won over hearts of all Baikonur residents, ” city administrator Anatoly Petrenko said during a ceremony Wednesday. “I admire you. All the best at launch”.

A French documentary crew followed Pesquet during training, focusing on his relative youth and fresh eyes.

Whitson has a pretty interesting backstory, so check out the NASA-produced video below if you want to calm your pre-launch jitters with some good ole American bootstrappiness (raised on a farm? check).

“We are working hard to highlight the stories of those people”, she said in an interview a year ago. But at the time, she had a second job offer on the table: a prestigious gig at the Salk Institute, near San Diego. He and his crewmates will enjoy dishes whipped up in advance by top chefs; Pesquet said hell prepare the New Years feast. Although that makes her the oldest woman, she has a while to catch up to the oldest man because John Glenn was 77 years old when he flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery back in 1998.

In recent months, Whitson has worked hard to shed light on a group she calls the “NASA Village” ― her team of trainers and technicians.