International Space Station (ISS).
Moscow, Sep 11 (EFE).-
Russia successfully launched a Soyuz spacecraft on Wednesday, carrying two Russian cosmonauts and one American astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS).
The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft is flying Russian cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner along with NASA astronaut Donald Pettit to the ISS.
The launch, broadcast live on Russian television, took place at 16:23 GMT from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, using a Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket.
The Soyuz MS-26 will dock with the ISS using the “fast-track” route, reaching the station in just 3 hours and 10 minutes after completing two orbits around the Earth.
The current ISS crew consists of seven members, including Russia’s Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Alexandr Grebenkin, and America’s Tracy C. Dyson, Mike Barratt, Matthew Dominick, and Jeanette Epps.
According to Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, the Soyuz MS-26 crew will stay on the ISS for 202 days and return to Earth on Apr.1, 2025. During their mission, they will conduct 42 scientific experiments.
In December, Ovchinin and Vagner are scheduled to perform a spacewalk to install a spectrometer on the Zvezda module, which is part of the Russian segment of the ISS, among other tasks. EFE