Nicole Mann becomes first Native American woman in space on Crew-5 mission

Nicole Mann has become the first Native American woman in space as she lifted off in command of a flight to the International Space Station on Wednesday that also included the first Russian to join a US space flight since the invasion of Ukraine.

The four-member crew is scheduled to arrive at the ISS after about 29 hours, on Thursday evening, to begin a 150-day science mission aboard the orbital laboratory 250 miles (420km) above Earth.

The mission, designated Crew-5, marks the fifth full-fledged ISS crew Nasa has flown aboard a SpaceX vehicle since the private rocket venture, founded by the Tesla owner, Elon Musk, began sending US astronauts aloft in May 2020.

Mann, 45, is a veteran combat pilot who has made spaceflight history not just as the first indigenous woman in orbit but as the first woman to command a Crew Dragon capsule.

She is a registered member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes. The only other Indigenous American to have entered orbit is John Herrington, who flew on a 2002 shuttle mission.

The Crew-5 mission is also notable for the inclusion of Kikina, 38, the lone female cosmonaut on active duty for the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and the first Russian to fly onboard an American spacecraft since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The last Russian cosmonaut to ride a US rocket into orbit was in 2002, on a Nasa space shuttle.

Kikina is swapping places with a Nasa astronaut who took her seat onboard a Russian Soyuz flight to the ISS last month, under a new ride-sharing deal signed by Nasa and Roscosmos in July.

The new arrivals are tasked with conducting more than 200 experiments, many of them focused on medical research ranging from 3-D bio-printing of human tissue to the study of bacteria cultured in microgravity.

US-Russian space cooperation has been tested as never before since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, leading the Biden administration to impose sweeping sanctions against Moscow.

Nasa hopes to keep the ISS running with its existing partners until roughly 2030.