The Soyuz MS-29 mission that NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman had traveled to Baikonur to witness—the first NASA chief at the cosmodrome for a Soyuz launch in nearly eight years—lifted off on schedule today at 10:47 a.m. EDT and docked to the International Space Station’s Prichal module at 1:56 p.m., NASA reported. Crew members Menon, Dubrov, and Kikina began an expedition of roughly eight months aboard the station.
Isaacman also held his scheduled meeting with Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov at Baikonur. The Russian daily Izvestia reported that the agenda was “the future of the ISS,” though no substantive readout had been released as of this writing; TASS and NASA statements are expected later in the day.