San Francisco Frontiers - International crew bound for space station

American astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan's Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov lifted off at 11:43 am aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule mounted on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The capsule, named Endeavour, has previously flown four NASA missions as well as a private mission.

The Crew-11 mission marks the 11th crew rotation mission to the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which was created to succeed the Space Shuttle era by partnering with private industry.

As part of their six-month stay, the Crew-11 astronauts will simulate Moon landing scenarios that could be encountered near the lunar South Pole under the United States-led Artemis program.

Using handheld controllers and multiple display screens, they will test how shifts in gravity affect astronauts' ability to pilot spacecraft, including future lunar landers.

Continuously inhabited since 2000, the ISS functions as a vital testbed for research that supports deeper space exploration -- including eventual missions to Mars.

Among Crew-11's more colorful cargo items are Armenian pomegranate seeds, which will be compared to a control batch kept on Earth to study how microgravity influences crop growth.

The ISS is set to be de-commissioned after 2030, with its orbit gradually lowered until it breaks up in the atmosphere over a remote part of the Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo, a spacecraft graveyard.

Dmitry Bakanov, the head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos has been holding talks with NASA's acting administrator Sean Duffy this week about the station's future.

When US-Russia relations nosedived at the start of the Ukraine war, Russia threatened to pull out of ISS cooperation early. But on Thursday, Bakanov confirmed Russia remained committed to de-orbiting in 2030.

V.Perez--SFF