A Russian Soyuz spacecraft will launch an American astronaut and two cosmonauts to the Worldwide Area Station early Friday (April 9) — and you’ll watch it stay on-line.
The Soyuz capsule carrying NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov is scheduled to launch atop a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at three:42 a.m. EDT (0742 GMT or 12:42 p.m. native time) on Friday for a fast, three-hour journey to the International Space Station.
You possibly can watch the motion stay here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Launch protection will begin at 2:45 a.m. EDT (0745 GMT).
Video: Astronaut Mark Vande Hei dishes on his last-minute spaceflight
If every little thing goes based on plan, the trio’s spacecraft will dock with the area station round 7:07 a.m. EDT (1107 GMT). Protection of that occasion will start at 6:15 a.m. EDT (1015 GMT). NASA may also webcast the hatch opening and crew or flight controller remarks, that are anticipated to happen round eight:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT).
This mission would be the second spaceflight for Vande Hei, the third for Soyuz commander Novitskiy and the primary for Dubrov.
NASA introduced Vande Hei’s involvement on this mission simply final month. Often crewmembers for long-duration area station missions get years of discover, however NASA fast-tracked Vande Hei after the company’s plans to shift to industrial crew alternatives have been sophisticated by ongoing technical points with Boeing’s Starliner astronaut taxi, which can delay that car’s first crewed flight to 2022.
(Like Boeing, SpaceX holds a contract with NASA’s Business Crew Program. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule is up and operating and has already carried two crews to the orbiting lab.)
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Vande Hei did have some discover of the flight earlier than the general public announcement, he told Space.com in an exclusive interview. “Me getting ready for this flight was one thing we had performed as a contingency, simply in case we may get the seat,” he stated.
NASA normally buys seats aboard the Soyuz. However on this case, NASA and Roscosmos, Russia’s federal area company, as a substitute agreed to trade seats — Vande Hei’s on the Soyuz for a to-be-determined Roscosmos astronaut on a future industrial crew flight. Flight assignments are nonetheless being decided as NASA works out the kinks with industrial crew scheduling, and Vande Hei could thus spend a year fairly than the standard six months in area. However that hasn’t been absolutely determined but.
“Issues change and … now we have to coordinate with the Russians, Roscosmos particularly, to determine when to come back again,” Vande Hei advised Area.com.
His earlier spaceflight lasted six months. So Vande Hei stated he’ll look ahead to a brand new “life expertise” if he’s tasked to remain aloft for a yr.
The three-person Soyuz MS-18 crew will be part of seven Expedition 64 spaceflyers presently on the orbiting lab, making for one of the biggest crews in recent memory. The seven individuals already there arrived on two spaceships final yr. A Soyuz introduced NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov to the station in October. Then, a SpaceX Crew Dragon despatched NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, in addition to Japan’s Soichi Noguchi, to the orbiting complicated in November.
Friday’s launch will happen three days earlier than the 60th anniversary of the primary human spaceflight, from the identical place that hosted that historic liftoff. On April 12, 1961, the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin launched to Earth orbit from Baikonur. Russia’s area company Roscosmos has named the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft Gagarin after the famed cosmonaut.
Comply with Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Fb.
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