A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts will launch towards the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) in the present day (Sept. 11), and you may watch the motion stay.
NASA astronaut Don Pettit will be a part of Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which can raise off atop a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in the present day at 12:23 p.m. EDT (1623 GMT; 9:23 p.m. native Baikonur time). The trio will be a part of the Expedition 71 crew for a half-year mission aboard the ISS.
As we speak’s Soyuz MS-26 launch will stream stay right here at Area.com, by way of NASA+ (previously NASA Tv). Protection begins at 11:15 a.m. EDT (1515 GMT). NASA may even broadcast the Soyuz’s deliberate 3:33 p.m. EDT (1933 GMT) docking with the ISS beginning at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT), and the 5:50 p.m. EDT (2150 GMT) hatch opening between the 2 spacecraft, starting at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT).
Every crewmember has flown to house earlier than. This can be Pettit’s fourth launch and can add to his collected whole of 370 days in house, in keeping with NASA statistics. His first mission, Expedition 6, was anticipated to final 2.5 months in house after a launch Nov. 23, 2002 on house shuttle Endeavour’s STS-113 mission.
The touchdown was delayed to Could 3, 2003, nonetheless, after the shuttle fleet was grounded within the wake of the house shuttle Columbia catastrophe that befell on Feb. 1, 2003, killing seven astronauts. Pettit’s arrival on Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-1 spacecraft was protected, however eventful: a malfunction brought on the spacecraft to land 295 miles (475 kilometers) off course, inflicting a prolonged delay for floor groups to succeed in the crew.
Associated: 3 spaceflyers arrive on the ISS aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft
Pettit additionally flew to house on the shuttle mission STS-126 in November 2008, and (aboard Soyuz TMA-03M) with ISS Expeditions 30 and 31 from Dec. 21, 2011 to July 1, 2012.
Ovchinin’s launches have all been aboard Soyuz. His earlier missions embody ISS Expeditions 47 and 48 in 2016, the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft launch on Oct. 11, 2018 that aborted safely after a rocket downside, and Expeditions 59 and 60 in 2019 — a profitable retry for Ovchinin following that abort.
Vagner’s earlier launch was aboard Soyuz, for Expeditions 62 and 63, in 2020.
