NEW YORK, Oct. 5 - NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson described her flight with Russian cosmonauts aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft as "a privilege and a pleasure."
"It has been an honor to represent NASA, to live and work aboard our magnificent International Space Station for the past six months," she said at a NASA press conference in Houston. "It was also an honor and a pleasure to fly, not once but twice, with our Russian partners aboard their historic Soyuz rocket and their spacecraft, as well as to participate in all of their deep traditions through training and launch and landing."
Dyson flew to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft in March under a Russian-American seat swap agreement. She spent a little less than six months in orbit and returned to Earth in late September with Roskosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko (who was TASS special correspondent on the ISS) and Nikolai Chub.
In July 2022, Roskosmos and NASA signed a seat swap agreement that allows Russian cosmonauts to fly to the ISS on US spacecraft and US astronauts to travel aboard Russian spacecraft. The agreement ensures that there will always be at least one Russian cosmonaut and one NASA astronaut aboard the ISS to operate its Russian and US segments. In December 2023 came the news that Roskosmos and NASA plan to continue mutual flights up to and including 2025. Head of NASA's Manned Spaceflight Directorate Ken Bowersox told TASS news agency that the Russian and US space agencies are working to extend the seat exchange program.
TASS/ Photo: Sergej Savostyanov / gnews.cz - HeK
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