A trio of Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, the first new faces in space since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine.

A trio of Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, the first new faces in space since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine.

Three Russian cosmonauts blasted off to the International Space Station Friday, as Moscow's military intervention in Ukraine brought the Kremlin's relations with the West to their lowest point since the Soviet era.

Russian space veteran Oleg Artemyev and rookies Denis Matveyev and Sergei Korsakov set off at 1555 GMT, a NASA live feed showed, beginning a three-hour ride to the orbital lab where they will be greeted by a crew of two Russians, four Americans and one German.

Russian space agency Roscosmos confirmed in a statement that the trio had successfully entered orbit beginning a half-year mission aboard the lab.

In the years since Russia's 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea triggered a first wave of Western sanctions, space has proved an outlier of cooperation between Moscow and its American and European counterparts.

But tensions even in this field grew after Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed nationalist ally Dmitri Rogozin—an enthusiastic supporter of the current invasion—as head of Roscosomos in 2018.

"Ours! For the first time in many years—a completely Russian crew," Rogozin wrote on Friday prior to the launch on Twitter—a messaging service that has been blocked in Russia since March 4 as part of a crackdown on social media and the independent press.

The first trip to the moon for NASA's new rocket has one more major hurdle, but it's taking the jump nice and slow as Artemis I began its 4.4-mile journey with a top speed of 0.8 mph to the launch pad Thursday.

The 5.75-million-pound, 322-foot-tall combination of the Space Launch System, Orion capsule and mobile launcher were placed on NASA's crawler-transporter 2 for the 11-hour trip that began just before 6 p.m. to Launch Pad 39-B, where mission managers plan on doing a wet dress rehearsal within the next month.

Thousands crowded the parking lots and open fields surrounding the Vehicle Assembly Building cheering as NASA Administrator Bill Nelson spoke with the towering hardware in the background.

"There's no doubt that we are in a golden era of human space exploration, discovery and ingenuity in space, and it all begins with Artemis I," he said, thanking the NASA employees and family members gathered for the event. "Our workforce has been a relentless spirit. We imagine. We build. We never stop pushing the envelope of what is possible."

Also speaking was Kennedy Space Center director Janet Petro, who pointed out Artemis was following in the trail of 60 years of space exploration.

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