A Russian cosmonaut who took some aloha on a six-month mission to the International Space Station was welcomed in Hawaii on Monday by Gov. David Ige and former Gov. George Ariyoshi.

Mission commander Oleg Artemyev broke with tradition and chose “Hawaii” as the call sign for his Soyuz spaceflight. He said Russian space missions were usually named after Soviet areas and, more recently, Russian place names.

Artemyev carried with him into orbit a copy of a photo of the Ariyoshi family that Hawaii-born astronaut Ellison Onizuka had aboard the ill-fated space shuttle Challenger mission in 1986.

The Challenger exploded after takeoff, killing all seven astronauts aboard. The intact photo was recovered from the ocean two months later.

“Thirty-three years later the Russian commander flew the picture (in space) for 200 days, and it’s just amazing people have stepped forward and helped complete Ellison’s mission,” said Onizuka’s brother, Claude, after a ceremony at the state Capitol.

Henk Rogers, co-founder of The Tetris Co., a Hawaii- based entrepreneur and advocate for space exploration and settlement, had traveled to Kazakhstan in March 2018 for the launch of Artemyev’s MS-08 spacecraft and arranged for the cosmonaut to take along the Ariyoshi family photo and some other items.

During a visit Monday to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, Artemyev noted that Hawaii, in the middle of the Pacific, has had influences from Russia and America, including a series of Russian forts built in the 1800s on Kauai and Oahu.

Artemyev said he picked “Hawaii” for the mission name because the state lies between the two great powers.

“We have the common history around this place,” he said through an interpreter. “There are some political tensions between the countries, so we want to kind of loosen it a bit” with the “Hawaii” mission.

Crew members — two Americans also were on board — even wore aloha shirts before takeoff, Ige said. The governor proclaimed March 4 as “International Space Station 55th Expedition ‘Hawaii’ Mission Day.”

“Thank you for my friends from Hawaii,” Artemyev, who has made two spaceflights, said in limited English.

Rogers had extended an invitation for Artemyev and his family to visit Honolulu, said Elissa Lines, executive director of the aviation museum. He also stopped at the USS Arizona Memorial.

“A departure from the more traditional mission names, Oleg honored the aloha spirit that he hopes space travel is sharing with the world,” Lines said in an email. “With hundreds of local school children visiting the museum on the same day, it was a reminder of the responsibility we all share to teach our children the value of, and aspiration for, peace and friendship amongst nations.”

Rolf Erdmann, with PTScientists, a Berlin-based private space company aiming for the moon who also was at the aviation museum, said Artemyev “deeply believes in international collaboration” on space exploration.

In October 2017 Rogers held the first International Moonbase Summit on Hawaii island to advance the development of a base on the moon — which he said will be done robotically.

“We’re working to learn how to 3D-print the stuff that we find on the moon,” he said. “In other words, you don’t want to carry concrete up to the moon. It’s a million dollars a kilo to send something to the moon. You want to use the materials that are there. So we’ve been figuring that out.”

A participant suggested that Rogers travel to Kazakhstan to watch Artemyev’s spaceflight.

The launch occurred at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the same launchpad Yuri Gagarin used on the first human spaceflight on April 12, 1961, according to nasaspaceflight.com.

Rogers said the launch was “spectacular,” with a train towing the Soyuz spacecraft into place to be connected to support armature.

“It was a night launch, so all of a sudden you could see it lights up, and then it really lights up, and out of this bright, massive light comes the Soyuz,” Rogers said. “I’ve watched the space shuttle launch before, and the space shuttle is like a massive truck. The Soyuz is like a little pocket rocket.”