Russia on Thursday launched an unmanned spacecraft containing a humanoid robot named Fedor to the International Space Station (ISS) in a test of a new rocket.
"The Soyuz 2.1A rocket, equipped with a new digital flight control system and engines developed, comes to replace the Soyuz FG rocket, which has been used for decades to launch crews into space," NASA said in a statement.
The International Space Station, used for experiments that may be impossible on Earth, is mostly a collaboration between Russian and American crews, and represents one of the strongest relations between the two rival superpowers.
The Russian "Skybot-F850", also known as "Fedor", a Russian name used for males, is designed for operations that are "particularly dangerous for humans," the Russian space agency Roscosmos said in a statement.
