NASA Astronaut Plants Tree In Baikonur Ahead Of First Mission To Space Station

Daniyal Sohail Published July 12, 2019 | 09:39 PM

NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan planted an elm tree in the Kazakh city of Baikonur on Friday ahead of his first trip to the International Space Station

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 12th July, 2019) NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan planted an elm tree in the Kazakh city of Baikonur on Friday ahead of his first trip to the International Space Station.

A video posted on YouTube by the Russian space training center showed Morgan plant the sapling together with his teammates mission commander Alexander Skvortsov of Russia and Luca Parmitano of Italy.

Planting a tree in the Baikonur's Ally of Cosmonauts is a tradition started by Yuri Gagarin, the first man to go to space. Skvortsov and Parmitano planted their saplings respectively in 2010 and 2013.

The trio continued on Friday training in quarantine for the July 20 launch of a Soyuz MS13 spacecraft to the space outpost on top of a Soyuz FG rocket. The craft is expected to dock with the space station on July 21.