Roscosmos launched Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft,at 0713 GMT from its Launch Pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 20, 2017, the first two-man crew launch to International Space Station (ISS) in over a decade; with veteran Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA rookie Jack Fischer.Manned launches to the ISS usually involve three crew members.

 Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities, commonly known as Roscosmos, is the governmental body responsible for the space science program of Russia and general aerospace research.Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is the same departure point from which Yuri Gagarin took off on the first human voyage into space in April 1961.

 Fyodor Yurchikhin, 58, making his fifth flight into space, sat into the center seat of the Soyuz MS-04 spaceship during launch. He is native of Georgia, the former Soviet state, previously flew aboard the space shuttle Atlantis and completed three long-duration stays on the ISS.

 Jack Fischer, 43, is on his first spaceflight after joining NASA Astronaut Corps in 2009. Born and raised in Colorado, Fischer is a colonel in the US Air Force and a former F-15E and F-22 fighter pilot.

Yurchikhin and Fischer will spend the next four and a half months in space,during the mission at the station, where three astronauts, including NASA’s Peggy Whitson,with her Expedition 51 crew mates,Oleg Novitsky of Roscosmos and France’s Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) is already stationed.Novitsky and Pesquet will return to Earth, with a landing scheduled for early June. Another Russian-American duo, Yuri Malenchenko and Edward Lu, undertook the last two-man mission to the International Space Station, in April 2003.

Peggy Whitson is the first woman to command the space station ISS twice, having inherited command of the lab forthe first time from Mr. Yurchikhin in 2007.She will return to Earth in early September after NASA decided to extend her stay in space by three months. In March, 2017, she seized the record for most space walks by a female. Now, after launching on Nov. 17 with 377 days in space already under her belt, she’s surpassed astronaut Jeff Williams’ previous United States record of 534 days, 2 hours and 48 minutes of cumulative time in space.

Russia is currently the only country executing manned space flights to the ISS,despite its space industry having suffered a string of setbacks and launch failures in recent years.

ISS, a floating artificial satellite is aresearch laboratory, launched in 1998, is also a rare example of American and Russian international cooperation that has been orbiting Earthat about 28,000 kilometers per hour or 17000 miles per hour since 1998.