The United States and Russia seem to be in opposing camps on issue after issue of late. To list a few: the war in Syria, alleged interference in U.S. elections, Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, and the poisoning of a former spy in Britain.
Outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson addressed some of the U.S. concerns with Russia in a speech at the State Department on March 13.
But there is one area where Russia and the United States can still get along: outer space.
On Wednesday, NASA streamed video of a Russian cosmonaut and two American astronauts leaving Earth together in a rocket.
Expedition 55-56 Soyuz commander Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos boarded the Russian Soyuz MS-08 spacecraft alongside flight engineers Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold of NASA.
The launch took place in Kazakhstan. Before entering the spacecraft, they participated in some local traditions, including receiving a blessing from a Russian Orthodox priest.
The three men are bound for the International Space Station, where NASA says they will join colleagues from Russia, the United States and Japan to spend more than five months engaged in scientific and technological research.
In August, David Filipov wrote in The Washington Post that space was one of the few matters on which the United States and Russia could still agree:
American astronauts have been relying on Russia to fly them to the International Space Station since the U.S. space shuttle program shut down in 2011.
Despite muttering in Moscow about cosmic retaliation for the latest U.S. sanctions, the Kremlin is not expected to follow through.
Not when NASA pays $80 million for a seat on a Soyuz rocket.
