WASHINGTON – A Soyuz spacecraft with two Russian astronauts and one American astronaut arrived at the International Space Station on April 9, hours after its launch from Kazakhstan.
A Soyuz 2.1a rocket lifted from the Baikonur food modroom at 3:42 a.m. and placed the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft in orbit. The spacecraft docked east of the station’s Rassvet module at 07:05 following a two-lane approach to the station.
The Soyuz brought NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov to the station. They will remain at the station until at least October as part of the crew of Expedition 65.
Novitsky, commander of the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft, will return to Earth in October on the spacecraft. However, both Dubrov and Vande Hei could stay at the station for up to a year if Roscosmos decides to have spaceflight participants fly on the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft in October. The astronauts – probably a director and actress for a movie filmed at the station – would be launched on Soyuz MS-19, but return after about a week at the station with Novitsky on MS-18 .
In a call with reporters on March 15, Vande Hei acknowledged the uncertainty about how long he will be at the station. ‘To be honest, for me it’s just an opportunity for a new life experience. I have never been in space for more than six months, ”he said, referring to his six-month stay at the station in 2017–2018. “I’m very enthusiastic about it.”
Vande Hei was formally added to Soyuz MS-18 just a month before its launch, after the agency reached an agreement with Roscosmos and the commercial space company Axiom Space to acquire the seat. Roscosmos sold the seat to Axiom, who then transferred it to NASA in exchange for a seat on a future commercial crew, probably in 2023.
NASA, which previously bought seats directly from Roscosmos, saw this unusual approach as a bottleneck, as it was working on an agreement with Roscosmos to exchange direct seats between the two agencies. Under that plan, NASA astronauts would continue to fly on Soyuz spacecraft, while Russian cosmonauts would fly on commercial crews, without exchanging money between the agencies. Such ‘mixed crew members’ ensure that there will always be NASA and Roscosmos personnel at the station if the Soyuz spacecraft or commercial crew has been grounded for a long period of time.
That agreement was not completed. However, NASA has not yet filled the fourth seat for the Crew-3 commercial crew, a spacecraft of the Crew Dragon plan that will not be launched until October 23. However, NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn and European astronaut Matthias Maurer were assigned to that flight.
Vande Hei said he was not involved in the negotiations to secure his seat in the Soyuz. However, he trained with Novitsky and Dubrov, as well as Sergei Korsakov, a Russian astronaut who was originally assigned to the mission. Korsakov was ousted from the mission to give his place to Vande Hei.
Vande Hei noted that at one point there were two versions of the Soyuz MS-18 mission tag created by Roscosmos, one with his name and the other with Korsakov. In a show of camaraderie, Vande Hei said he wore the version of the patch named Korsakov while Korsakov wore the patch named Vande Hei. “I will always consider him a part of our team,” he said of Korsakov.
With the arrival of Soyuz MS-18, the crew of the station temporarily increases to 10 people. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov will return to Earth on April 17 on the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft.
The next mission for commercial crew, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Crew-2, remains scheduled to launch on April 22nd. It will transport NASA’s Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Thomas Pesquet of ESA and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan’s space agency JAXA to the station. The Crew-1 mission, featuring NASA’s Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker and JAXA’s Soichi Noguchi, will return to Earth on April 28.