Belarusian Marina Vasilevskaya has been readied for the space flight, the head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, said. Soyuz MS-25 was scheduled to fly on Thursday, March 21. Mission commander Oleg Novitsky, Belarusian by origin, representing Roscosmos, NASA’s Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Belarusian Marina Vasilevskaya were on board.
While discussing on the news on the air of the program “Azarenok. Napryamuyu” on March 11, a political scientist, Andrei Lazutkin, said that spaceflight has a hidden meaning. Here is what he, in particular, said:
“It cannot be that the Americans and we are fighting on the battlefield, essentially, where they give target designations through their satellite systems, and here, look, we are friends. We have flown into space to the stars. We've already made up, right? It doesn't happen that way. There is always a sort of political background. Therefore, I think, it will be something interesting on the spacecraft board. I think we just need to fly off normally and come back normally. And this will already be a kind of bridge between Russia and, possibly, the Republican Party [of the United States], to carry out the normalization.”
Russia and the United States had been launching crews with each other's astronauts to the ISS both before and after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Although, most of the agreements between NASA and Roscosmos were terminated.
The ISS is an international project funded by 15 countries, including Russia and the U.S.A.
For almost ten years until 2020, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft had been launching spacecraft crew members to the ISS. The United States had been paying Russia $90 million for each astronaut brought to the ISS. Four years ago, NASA SpaceX shuttles also began spaceflying to the ISS.
In July 2022, NASA and Roscosmos agreed about "seat" barter on each other’s spacecraft. That is, in case a U.S. rocket launches one of the Russian astronauts, the Russian side provides spaceflight for one of the U.S. astronauts in return.
In December 2023, Roscosmos announced both it and NASA will continue the International Space Station launches with each other's crew members through at least 2025.
In September 2023, the Roskosmos launched the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft to the ISS. The mission crew included NASA astronaut Laurel O'Hara, as well as Russians Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub.
In August, the U.S. launched the Crew Dragon-7 spacecraft, which led Roscosmos astronaut Konstantin Borisov to the ISS.
There are currently seven astronauts, three are Russians, and the rest are Americans, on the ISS.
So, Belarusian Marina Vasilevskaya's spaceflight is one out of many.
