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NASA astronaut Christina Koch captured this incredible image from the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday. It shows a Russian Soyuz spacecraft making its way towards her, having launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

“What it looks like from @Space_Station when your best friend achieves her lifelong dream to go to space,” Koch wrote on Twitter. “Caught the second stage in progress!”

The craft was carrying NASA flight engineer Jessica Meir, who Koch referred to in her tweet. Also on board were Oleg Skripochka from the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Hazzaa Ali Almansoori from the United Arab Emirates. The journey marks the first time an astronaut from the UAE has gone to space.

The exhaust from the rocket is visible in the background. Its trail looks wiggly, which is probably because of the spacecraft being blown by the wind when it was closer to Earth, as well as small course corrections when it was higher up.

The five other astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS with Koch gathered to watch the spacecraft’s approach. Andrew Morgan, a NASA astronaut, tweeted: “All six members of #Expedition60 packed into the cupola, our window on the Earth, to see this rare spectacle.”

This flight marked the final scheduled use of the launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome before it is upgraded to accommodate launches of more modern Soyuz rockets.

The spacecraft docked safely with the Poisk module on the Russian segment of the ISS at 20:42 BST, after four orbits of Earth.

, Expedition 61 crew members will install new lithium-ion batteries in the station’s solar array, and upgrade and repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, an instrument used to search for dark matter and antimatter in cosmic rays.